Girls of Science Era
by alvaro84
Summary: A sequel to Magical Girl Crusade. Her victory has changed the world in more ways than she would have thought. 6 years have passed, and the veterans of Walpurgisnacht are the heroes of a new world. Are they happy now? [19-shot] [MadoHomu] [AU... okay, AM] [Quite a bit of Rebellion] [Fringe S5 too] [Rated M to be on the safe side, for the things to come] [Nice Walfas cover]
1. Last Remote

**Last Remote**

_v0.9_

[May 2017, Hochfeld, Namibia]

Someone was lying on her belly in the bushes, with binoculars in her hand. A slim, hooded figure, constantly watching the patrolling guards and the watchtowers, not even caring about the flies anymore, only driving away the fattest from her telescope's lens with a twitch. She had been on watch here every day for the last week, studying the guards' routes and the timing of their shift changes. She was also looking for those paranormal phenomena that locals were mentioning only in whispers in the doorways and ramshackle taverns rarely visited by the police.

Only yellow grass and patches of thorny brushwood grew in the wired area, and nothing moved inside except for the rippling of the hot air. It would have been impossible to go further unnoticed in daylight, but she collected enough information to get inside at night.

She saw a lot during the week she spent here in the bushes, at the edge of the civilization, close to a run-of-the-mill, small, poor African town. One year after the military coup, secretly funded by the Moleli government, the facility before her didn't officially exist. While it wasn't particularly hard to get inside the fence she had never seen anyone leaving – except for the lorries carrying supplies that were unloaded outside the building and the jeeps that politicians and high ranking officers used to visit the base. And, of course, the police wagons that always came in the dark.

Some civilians tried to hunt down the antelopes that got caught inside when the barbed wire fence was built – these people stayed inside forever. The guards escorted most of them inside the huge, flat concrete building, while the others were shot down outside and their bodies thrown into the open pits in the savanna. These unmarked graves were surrounded by flies during the day and ghost lights at night and ghastly whining and groans terrorized anyone who dared to approach. The nearly forgotten descendant of the Ovambo shamans came to calm down the dead, but he was scared away by bursts from the guards' submachine guns.

The scout had heard many interesting things from him, but it wasn't easy to tell the truth apart from the superstition, especially that the truth she was looking for was far enough from 'normal' to look superstition itself. Paranormal experiments seemed to go on in there, but beyond a certain point she couldn't get a word out of the young shaman.

"You're Japanese, just like those who enticed my younger sister. If you don't know, who does?", he snarled at her. "Moleli and his company called them here to bother the dead with their crazy machines. The last word my sister sent was about a ghost they sealed and made work for them. I've been having nightmares since then."

Then he fell silent and didn't tell anything else, no matter how many drinks she bought him. But today she would finally learn what had happened to the missing people and why did this shaman blamed her fellow countrymen. The Sun was slowly creeping towards the horizon, gradually turning into a huge, rippling red disc. The guards were waiting for the relief, and so was the scout in the bush. She knew that the night watch seriously lacked discipline.

The growing shadows engulfed the scenery as the Sun finally slid down from the sky. She tardily got up and dusted her clothes.

"Mami, you and your dumb ideas... Should I just try to shout like you taught me, these drunkards would shoot me like a partridge..."

_Rosso Fantasma._ She didn't even have to say the name, it was enough to think of the effect. With this she'd get inside and learn how accurate Oriko's guess had been. The platinum blonde girl saw the future more clearly than the present, but even her hunches of the present could prove useful, especially if they were concerning her own kind.

The electric gate of the building opened. A young girl peeked out, had a careful look around and dashed into the nearby bushes. Her crimson dress and long, red hair fluttered in the wind as she crossing the road, brandishing a spear.

The scout couldn't understand the shouting coming from the watchtowers, but she saw some guards climbing down the ladders and run toward the building, with guns in their hands.

A second girl in crimson, looking like the first one's twin sister appeared and began to run towards the piles of debris on the other side. The guards aimed at her yelling and sprayed her with bullets while running. The girl fell over and stopped moving for good. The guards split up. Two ran toward the corpse while the third dashed through the gate to look if there was more of these mysterious girls. At least he tried, but he slammed into the open gate like he hit solid concrete.

"At least I won't have to take care of this one.", the spy outside the fence acknowledged. The guards that stayed in the tower broke in shouting again, this time with walkie-talkies in their hands. A siren began to howl, light beams carved yellow circles in the dark blue grass.

Now that she dropped her cloak her shoulder length ruby hair that she wore in a short ponytail was almost glowing in the dark. She got gloves and knee pads out of her backpack and completed her outfit with them. She held back a giggle at the guards' perplexed gestures as they couldn't find the girl they shot down, then they beheld three of her, grinning down at them from the roof. She grinned too as she disappeared from human sight.

The electric fence clattered. A few seconds later the barbed wire on the top deformed under some invisible weight, then it returned to normal like nothing happened.

Very soon she was sitting by the wall next to an iron door, watching the dozens of guards very carefully not to touch any one of them. She had to get inside quickly before someone would have a look at the surveillance displays, because her ability could only fool live observers, not the indifferent glass and silicon.

She hoped for someone to open any of the gates or doors to find where those strange escapees came from, but it seemed the inner and outer guard squads were strictly separated. And these guards weren't even that surprised: they must had seen magical girls before. "One for Oriko!", she thought.

She was getting weary of the concentration she needed to maintain her invisibility. She was already considering returning to the world outside the fence ashamed, when the iron door next to her slammed open. She slipped through the opening without thinking and started to run along the corridor inside.

There were more doors sideways but they were all locked and she had no time to tinker with her lock picks, so she just kept running forward. She heard shots behind her back and she didn't care which squad dogged her, it didn't really matter. Some of the guards probably remembered to look through night vision.

The corridor forked and she sent a few of her illusion bodies to the right while she turned left and kept running. She looked back over her shoulder to see that the guards split up but there was still at least a dozen following her. Behind a bend she found herself in a dead end. She tried a few doors for no avail. The guards were quickly approaching the bend.

Suddenly she heard a voice inside her head.

"_This way!"_, it whispered and a door opened silently.

After a brief moment of hesitation she dashed through. The door immediately closed behind her back and she saw locks turning and bolts sliding as she turned around. She was in a laboratory surrounded by displays and various unknown devices.

"Welcome to the Power Station!", the voice lilted, this time through a speaker. Female voice, probably too old to be a magical girl, the scout guessed. "You'll have to forgive me for using the comm. Telepathic communication needs a lot of energy and I can't easily explain more than the usual few gigajoules with leakage current. Don't worry, this is a soundproof door."

"Who are you and what do you want from me? Are you the ghost the shaman mentioned?", the red-haired girl asked.

"I have no idea who that 'shaman' could be, but you did rather interesting things outside, Sakura Kyouko. The most interesting is, that you did them without a soul gem. You are inside your body."

Even more distrust clouded the face of the spy. They had known she'd come! The voice didn't disturb herself, she only waited a fraction of a second before she continued.

"I must know if I can trust you. Don't even try to lie to me, I'm constantly measuring your brain waves and the reactions of your body with 7-digit accuracy. I want to study your abilities. I need you for my private research. Don't worry, I won't do anything unusual to you."

"Or", she added after a short pause, like she took a breath, "I can open the door."

Kyouko couldn't help laughing at the pinch she got into. She suspected that this dubious stranger wanted to subject her to very unpleasant (but perfectly business-as-usual) experiments. But she still had some confidence in the future. While she was conscious, she could still cook up something. With some luck even the guards could mistake her real body for an illusion and she'd be free to look around... as long as she could come to an understanding with this...

She gave her a vague nod.

"I'm glad to see some sense in you.", the speaker answered. "By the way, I'm Meuko, the overseer of this facility."

* * *

><p>AN:

_At long last, here it is, the very first chapter of the sequel of Magical Girl Crusade._

_Originally I wrote (the first version of) this chapter on the winter that followed MGC, so it must have been around the border of 2011 and 2012. It took quite long to make a real sequel starting from here, one that's worth posting anywhere. Now that I'm approaching the end with writing the Hungarian version, I started translating the finished chapters too. The whole story turned out quite differently to what I wanted to do in the beginning._

_The girls' 'crusade' against Walpurgis and the Incubators was such a success that it changed the face of the world in the end. I wanted to show the world where knowledge about the Incubators' system is a commonplace, and it's only one of the major problems of humankind living on a slowly decomposing Earth (You mustn't have thought that two 'universes' just collapse into each other just because of a little local flaw, right? It must be self-correcting, ending in a singularity, not much bigger than the Solar system... not that it would make any difference in humanity's future...), but got sidetracked. This (almost) final version concentrates much more on the girls, especially three of them that somehow made me follow them. And it went far beyond the point where I planned to finish it. IMO it changed for the better (or the_ worse_, you'll tell). Science-y stuff is lurking in the dark corners..._

_Tags: Sakura Kyouko, Hochfeld Power Station, Rosso Fantasma, guns, night vision, Meuko_

_Beta read: shiNIN (soon at DA...)_

_Still, I can never be sure, I'm not native English - so feel free to spot errors. Thank you all._


	2. Legendary Wonderland

**Legendary Wonderland**

_v0.9_

[5 May, 2017]

[London]

Yet another city. They didn't even know how many cities they had visited in the last few years and they had never seen their nicer sides. And the more cities they had been to, the less difference they could see. Should these cities had been in Europe, Asia or America, the same atmosphere infected them all. The world wasn't united, but its preparation for the last judgment was.

The two girlfriends were shaking with cold in the London night. It was already morning for them, but the Earth's curvature ignored their inner clocks, and the weather was different too. The World Command demanded veterans for this mission and they were the most experienced veterans the UNIT (the organization dealing with aliens, magical girls, witches and time-space anomalies) could get. Sakura Kyouko and Tomoe Mami were probably occupied with some black operation as even Homura couldn't get a word out of the Kazamino bosses.

Many things had changed in the last six years, but the look of the girls wasn't all different now. They looked a bit more mature, but it might have only been the uniforms, the most grown-up attire the maturing 21st century could wrap them in. Madoka had become a bit taller and gloomier while Homura, who had been a serious and mature 14-year-old, hardly changed at all. They were definitely the same girls they were at the time of Walpurgisnacht. At the age of twenty, in their gray camouflage combat uniforms they resembled the child soldiers of the end of the Second World War. But their slow retreat at the edge of a disintegrating universe was still less cruel than being sent to massacre and die in a war beyond reason after a slipshod training.

The mission was preceded by unusually serious preparations. When the girls arrived, the neighborhood was already teeming with the vehicles of UNIT, the British army and Massive Dynamic. The police had just finished the evacuation and cordoned off the near blocks. It was apparent that what they found wasn't an everyday witch. The only things they remembered causing this huge ruckus were Walpurgisnacht and the collapse of the Sarcophagus in Mecca.

They were in the middle of a building site, surrounded by a UNIT squad in red berets. A short, gray-haired officer (Homura identified him as a Lieutenant General of the British Army with a quick look at his shoulder boards) stood in front of them, and the railed area was guarded by hundreds of soldiers and policemen. Helicopters were circling overhead, sweeping the area with reflectors. The General pointed to the pit of the ground works, where another squad in chemical protective suits were just lowering an amber gas tank into the pit.

"Ladies, I am Sir David Jasper Lindsay, Her Majesty's delegate. And this is the Moorgate Station. The Old Moorgate Station, to be more exact, because the one currently in use was opened in the 50s of the last century. Its predecessor caved in during the Second World War, then it was buried and blacktopped. Unlike me, you are not natives so you probably don't know about the evil repute of this place, so we prepared this summary for you."

His assistant, a jug-eared, freckled, red haired young soldier gave them a pair of folders while the General kept talking.

"The city administration naturally never gave credence to gossip and superstition, but I can tell you that they were relieved when they could rebuild the subway line so it avoided this infamous place. During the 70 years it was in service hundreds of people went missing in this neighborhood and the station was frequently mentioned in the Scotland Yard's documents. And still, no one could ever find any evidence, despite even police officers being listed among the missing."

Madoka was listening the General carefully while Homura was listening the General and watching Madoka. There were two things she trusted: her own reason and the other girl's intuition. The story began to look like an old spook story and behind those stories often there were witches. The General nodded acknowledging their attention and continued.

"This line was so feared that it got almost closed in the 1930s. During the War the city administration refrained from using this station as a shelter, but finally they opened it. After a few weeks of minor accidents the area was subjected to unusually intense bombing and the exits of the station caved in. The occupants were fleeing through the tunnel when a train crashed into the crowd, got derailed and closed the only way out. The survivors were waiting for the rescue team for several days without supplies. It took almost a week to withdraw enough soldiers from the battlefield to free them from the subway. The press were provided with some standard story, but in reality not every survivor of the train wreck could be rescued in the end. Many of them had to be sent to asylum and many horribly chewed bodies were found down in the tunnel, and none of this got public."

The two girls had seen enough to find it plausible that there had been witches behind this disaster. Many people disappeared in their labyrinths and even more were influenced by them to do horrible things. What these creatures could do with a group of desperate, starving bomb shelter inmates didn't bear thinking about.

"They devoured one another!", Madoka whispered.

The General nodded again.

"The investigation concluded the same back then. I know what you might think, and this was the very reason why we asked for UNIT supervision for the construction works. No one knows how long a bubble universe fed by the energy of several hundred lives can stay stable. We couldn't risk another disaster."

"And you were right!", they heard from behind their backs. The girls whirled around, but the familiar creature was only an image on a laptop's display. The camera turned upward for a moment and they could see Astrid waving, then the image was fixed again at the faux Incubator sitting in her lap.

"Walbey!", the girls called at once.

"Hello my dear!", the creature the other side of the screen looked at Homura. The little white creature treated her as a distant grandchild, just like Junko and Tomohisa had become like her parents. She couldn't understand why these people wanted to be her family. She had never tried to wheedle her way into anyone's confidence, she didn't really know how to handle people to begin with.

"Unfortunately I can't be there now, even though these guys sent us very interesting data from London! However, they forgot to mention that they dispatched you two to handle this anomaly!"

"We wanted to surprise you!", Sir Lindsay grinned.

"By the way, is it you who hides Kyouko?", Homura asked with feigned ease. It was clear that something was wrong.

"I'd like to say that she's babysitting the little Etta.", Walbey shook his head. In this form he didn't have access to all those useful human expressions. "But for your safety I have to keep quiet. I'm sorry, I can't tell you, at least not now."

Madoka anxiously looked at Homura, then back to the display.

"But there's no time to waste, my girls! The General has probably filled your heads with local ghost stories, but the measurements are strange indeed. So strange I needed a little LSD and a lot of Pink Floyd to see what should have been apparent. The bubble's contact area is much smaller than that of a normal witch barrier. We ran the data through the servers at Massive Dynamic so we know that it probably won't detach itself from our universe while you'll be in, but it can collapse any minute. At any rate, I've made you a pair of auxiliary resonators tuned to our world, in case of this very eventuality. Should it occur, these are going to automatically catapult you after warning you through your head up displays. You'll probably see leakage, so don't be surprised! It also means that seeing strange things doesn't mean you're in. No matter how experienced you are, please always mind what your computers indicate! Oh, and break a leg!"

The little creature at the other side of the world waved then the screen went blank.

"So we'll fly blind?", Homura asked.

"At least until you get inside. And should the bubble universe collapse you'll have exactly two minutes to get out of the pit, use the safety ropes. We can't take the risk, we'll immediately initiate the countdown should that happen.", the General answered.

The girls read through their folders, checked each other's equipment item by item (their lives depended on it) and injected themselves with their usual dose of Cortexiphan. Then Homura kissed Madoka's forehead and Madoka gave Homura a tight hug. Even though they always stayed together and they couldn't have returned alone, they always said goodbye before their missions. They fastened their carbine-swivels and started their descent. Very soon they lost the sight of the starlit sky and the HAZMAT squad overhead, just like they were descending to the pitch black bottom of the ocean. In this depth the wall was covered with huge fluorescent mushrooms and tiny, glowing maggots wriggled out of their burrows. Homura pulled her helmet's amber polymer display in front of her eyes and saw Madoka doing the same.

The helmet computer combined the 'real' and 'magical' scenery, corrected the spatial distortions and loops it detected, showed the safest alternative routes toward the center of the labyrinth and their entry point and recorded everything like an airplane's black box.

"T+42 seconds, depth: 34 meters", Homura read the numbers the computer projected before her eyes. Time was slowing down and distances increased as they approached the former platform.

Her feet suddenly hit the ground. She detached herself from the wire rope and left a marker on it. Her helmet camera showed her the ruins of a former subway station: sagged but mostly stable pillars, debris on the once smooth stone floor, scattered bones in the darkness, marked by the biodetector. A differently tuned camera showed centipedes, snails, mushrooms and coarse grass. The marker on the rope was glowing in purplish light, next to the other, pink sphere.

She saw Madoka confidently walking toward the barrier, with careful steps not to stomp the little creatures. Homura followed closely, knowing that the bubble could scatter them far from each other should it catch them with a mere few seconds of difference.

They sprang over a deep crack that would have been lost behind the magical foliage without their 'sober' cameras, and approached that vague, cocoon-like blur that showed the most probable location of the bubble. Curiously this blur seemed to pulsate, extending and contracting like a heart throbbing midair.

The helmet screen showed lines of data next to the blur. The wide band sensor caught hints of Hawking radiation. Pairs of virtual particles were popping out of nothing at the edge of the pocket universe and sometimes one of the pair got caught by the bubble while their escaping counterparts formed a faint radiation of particles and antiparticles at the edge of the labyrinth.

Normal barriers were constantly shrinking as these little worlds were slowly evaporating through these particles that were produced out of nowhere. This was the reason the witches had to trick clueless people into the labyrinth: witches fed on the energy of their emotions while the tiny event horizons were sustained by the matter of the victims' bodies. But this bubble was different. Maybe it was even less stable than their support team thought? Homura asked for a confirmation, but they couldn't sense anything indicating the bubble's collapse.

They circled the barrier with careful, practiced steps and met on the other side. Their moves might have looked like a strange tribal dance to the casual observer, but in fact they were building a mesh of sensors around the cocoon to find a suitable entry point.

Then they drew symbols in the air at the marked point. It wasn't magic, just a signal for their computers. Homura had always hated the next thing. She closed her eyes to counter the side effect of the trick they had to utilize to surprise the witch, to get inside without letting her pull them in.

Her combat uniform's built-in resonator shrieked: the bubble universes' frequency usually had some unpleasant sounding harmonic. It was a distracting side effect of breaking through the walls between these worlds, just like the dazzling flash of elusive colored light that temporarily blinded her even through her closed eyelids, and the nausea that forced her to her knees. She knew that Olivia could cross these borders without resonators and deep inside she was sure that Madoka could have done it too if she wouldn't have wanted to stay by her side all the way.

Homura looked up and saw Madoka standing beside her, like she always did.

"Take a deep breath, Homura-chan, you'll feel better in no time!", the other girl smiled behind the visor of her helmet. It was a surreal sight.

"I'll keep the visor open for a while. Warn me if it would be tricky without it, okay?", Homura asked while she staggered to her feet.

She looked around and was pleased by the sight: even her dose of Cortexiphan showed her a decent view of the labyrinth. The little world reflected the subway station outside, its membrane that separated it from the real world seemed to leak both ways. But she hardly had the time for a glance around, a train arrived. She traded a look with Madoka then they boarded the train.

They passed unmarked. The passengers were dozing in their seats. The two girls were glad that they didn't have to fight the familiars: with the elimination of the witch they would get stuck in the collapsing bubble anyway. They cautiously stepped over the wriggling tentacles of a slumbering girl who wore a crown on the top of her raven, bobbed hair and left the carriage.

The wind carried flames around them, like they were in hell. Their boots squelched in tar puddles while they were sidestepping the piles of scrap metal. Then one of these piles stirred. Trash and tar slowly formed a creature, the creature reached down and grabbed a porcelain head of a doll. It turned the head in its hand to face the girls, then it began to approach them. Homura looked for a defensible spot, but they were standing in the middle of a barren waste, surrounded by scrap metal piles approaching with swaying steps.

The Massive Dynamic Model 78 clicked in her hand as she cocked the gun, and the next click was answered by a rain of gears and drops of tar as the explosive bullet blasted the familiar to pieces.

She heard a similar explosion behind her back. After she got out of the time loop Madoka became a good magical girl... No, a good Veneficus Puella, as the press deliberately misconceived the initials of Vortex Patrol. She grew more confident, just like when she signed a pact with the Incubators. All in all, Homura could count on her on the battlefield.

Now she was following Madoka, while the pink haired girl went after the guidance strip the navigation software projected on her HUD. They scattered a few more scrap monsters while advancing, just to see them re-assembling from the pieces. It would have been pointless to stop, they could have never ended the battle without vanquishing the witch.

Suddenly something unexpected happened. Someone came to their help here, in the dark depths of a labyrinth that had been buried for seventy years. A dark haired girl in a blue dress skittered through the group of monsters with superhuman speed and chopped them into pieces with a sleek blade of a kitchen knife. And what she chopped up wouldn't stand up again.

Magic. Rumors had it that some witches could only be defeated with magical weapons, but Homura had never seen such a thing. Even Walpurgis had been vulnerable to the right amount of firepower. She looked questioningly at Madoka, but the other girl didn't look back; she was staring frozen at the sky.

A huge, disgusting figure was towering above them. Drawers and puppet hands' strings protruded from its serpentine body. Above its neck it looked like a goateed man, with tar oozing out of its every orifice, and hideous porcelain heads were looking around from the trails of tar.

Maybe it wasn't the most horrible witch they had ever seen, but surely it was among the grossest. Its string-pulled, severed hands were snatching at the girls' rescuer, but she skillfully evaded every attack and from time to time she landed a hit on the pale, knotted limbs.

Homura took aim and shot an explosive bullet right into the monstrosity's eye. The detonation covered the place with tar and porcelain shards, but the monstrosity's damaged skull just melted and re-formed itself. It was frustrating how it simply ignored her, keeping on snatching at the girl in blue dress, with success at that. It thoroughly groped the struggling girl, then hurled her to the floor. It held her down with four fingers, stuck out its sticky tar tongue and started to feel its way toward her.

Homura was stunned. Madoka wasn't someone who could sit and watch a monster doing this to a magical girl... why wasn't she doing anything now? Homura was horrified as she watched the disgusting tongue slowly flowing under the blue skirt...

She sprang up, at least she wanted to punch and kick the sickening Freudian monster, but Madoka grabbed her arm and held her back. Homura looked at her perplexedly. Madoka just pointed at the display before her eyes, reminding her that they saw the world differently.

"It's no good, Homura-chan. The witch isn't there."

She bent down, grabbed a lead pipe and ignoring the monstrous hand she bashed the desperately squirming girl in the head. The towering abomination splattered like it was hit by a comet. The pocket universe started to tremble.

The pillar above them lurched as the gravity was preparing to crush them with it. The two girls dragged the third out of harm's way without thinking, then they exchanged a look. What the hell would they do with an unconscious witch who didn't even try to harm them, but she had the grossest familiar they had ever seen? The girl lying before them was about the same age as they were, had pale complexion and delicate face. Witch or not, they pitied her.

"Every end is a beginning, and one day this world has to come to an end too. You would be the harbingers of doom, I suppose."

The two girls turned on their heels but they couldn't see anyone, save for a floating grin.

"Excuse my manners... I must have forgotten myself when I couldn't answer my own riddles for the first time..."

The stranger slowly faded in from thin air. First his head, then gradually his every part. A big, bald, bony cat was sitting before the girls, his body covered in tattoos, with a constant, distracting grin, idly flicking his tail. He didn't look trustworthy in the least.

"Please put that glare away. You might stab me with it like Alice does from time to time."

"Do you mean the witch?" Homura watched the cat through her helmet display. "Why are you with her now? Haven't you juiced enough energy out of her?"

"I'm not what you think.", the cat answered. "The Incubator had long left her, but she needed someone, so she created me, the old, cryptic, selfish friend. Now it's time for me to be selfless, at least this once. So I ask you: did you come to put an end to this farce? What if I don't let you?"

Madoka sadly shook her head.

"This is a different age. Humans have learned about Incubators and united they're not helpless against witches anymore. They have already prepared the amber gas tanks outside. We just came to try to close this bubble gently and save the survivors, should there be any in here. Should we fail, the HAZMAT squad would freeze your world in time and space."

"So nothing would change. Not every change is good, but this world has been dying for a long time, and it'll be dying forever if you don't put an end to its agony."

It was unsettling how the cat was still grinning. He was indeed too much like an ever smiling Incubator.

"So you want us to destroy this place?", Madoka asked while she sat down. She stroked the forehead of the witch whose face calmed at once.

"The choice is yours.", the cat said. "I can only tell you a story about a girl, who wished for a vast and rich Wonderland, and a white rabbit led her there. She had marvelous imagination, she kept reading until late night and in her dreams she was living in the stories she had immersed herself in while she was awake. And she could have it all, she just had to wish."

"But that wish came at a price.", Homura remarked. Always the same story, but they could never get used to it. Wishes corrupted to curses, and nothing remained but the endless fight with witches and a grave of despair.

"You must walk in the same shoes.", the cat noted. "Yes, it came at a price. At first, Alice had visited her world with pleasure. But soon enough it became a way to escape. Her life in the outside world got ruined by an untouchable criminal you have just seen. Seen as Alice sees him, to be more exact. Here she can fight and defeat him again and again like she never could in her real life. She can avenge her family again and again, her family that this despicable worm burned alive after raping her beloved sister. And while she was fighting this world kept decaying. Hardly anything remained by now, save for this infernal train."

"No wonder this universe is decaying: you've been buried for seventy years. You couldn't devour a single human during that time.", Homura said.

"Seventy years...", the cat savored her words. "What year is it now? It was 1875 when Alice moved here for good."

"2017.", the girl answered.

"Alice must be hungry.", the cat mused. "And I am a part of her."

The guns pointed at him in the girls' hands didn't seem to trouble him much.

"I suggest you to do what you have to do. But I'd appreciate if you did it with due respect. I promise I won't mess with you like I did with the queen's executioner."

Homura and Madoka silently cried for the girl in blue dress and her cat as they carefully placed the grief seed decorated with butterflies into an amber-polymer container. The little box automatically welded itself together with an orange glow. Now it was ready to take its resting place in a storage, much, much deeper than this subway station.

The two girls returned with staggering steps to the wire ropes they used to descend. They weren't in a hurry: there was no countdown, no quarantine was needed, the mission was a complete success. Not being truly happy about it was merely a part of the job.

* * *

><p><em>AN:_

_Here's the other two: Homura and Madoka are on a mission too. This is how former magical girls deal with witches. With science and guns, of course._

_It's another very old chapter. The whole idea was conceived while I played Alice: Madness returns. This version of the text is a later development, though. I didn't change too much of it, but those are important points:_

_One was Homura's background 6 years after Walpurgisnacht. Reading Rumiberri's "Cat's Cradle" was a huge facepalm moment and it found its way in here too. More on the subject in chp#4._

_The other was the science around witch labyrinths. I've made the text much clearer._

_Tags: Akemi Homura, Kaname Madoka, Walbey, Alice Liddell, Cheshire Cat, Cortexiphan, Pocket universe, Despair event horizon, Hawking radiation, Virtual particles, Moorgate Station, London_


	3. Reincarnation

**Reincarnation**

_v0.9_

[Namibia, Central Plateau, near Hochfeld]

The lock clicked on the lab's second door. Kyouko stepped through it without question and walked along the next corridor. What she had seen so far in this complex in the middle of nowhere was mostly like a mix of a military bunker and a research laboratory.

She tried to open a door that she walked past by stealth.

"The elevator is at the end of the corridor. Go to the 34th floor.", the voice instructed as if it caught her trying.

Kyouko silently stepped into the elevator and pushed two random buttons. She would have been fine with any number as long as it wasn't 34.

"Invalid destination.", a canned voice announced.

She tried more numbers, none of them worked. She took a deep breath and typed 34 with a snarl.

"Destination accepted. Let's go to the minus 34th floor!"

This time it was Meuko's voice. Kyouko didn't know who the person hiding behind that microphone was, but that someone was apparently playing cat-and-mouse with her. She angrily put her hands in her fatigue's pocket. She heard whizzing, the content of her stomach tried to find its way back to her throat.

"Tests are run at sea level, between floor minus twenty and minus thirty-two to ensure an optimal environment for our subjects.", Meuko informed her. "You are a particularly important subject so you'll get your first assignment two more floors deeper."

"You're messing with me.", Kyouko answered. "You want to know what would I do if I felt really shitty. But taking me for an idiot won't be enough for that."

"See for youself if you don't believe me.", the speaker answered. The elevator shook and Kyouko's weight doubled for a short while. Then everything fell silent, only the door hissed as it let her out to a flying scaffold.

Plain, flat concrete walls extended up and down from where she was standing. Her eyes couldn't get a grip on the endless line of lights that followed a bundle of cables thick as a tree trunk, into the dark nothing in both directions. Kyouko had already been standing at the edge of Grand Canyon and she hadn't felt that as deep as this mineshaft. Meuko might have been lying and they might haven't been a mile underground, but the sight was still overwhelming.

"Thank you, _now_ I feel like shit.", she unwittingly grunted.

"Okay, actually we have to be this deep because of the safety regulations. Like in Mojave desert. But to make you feel better I tell you that two of your friends are descending too right now. Kaname Madoka and Akemi Homura are exploring a deserted subway tunnel in London.", Meuko tried to comfort Kyouko who just grit her teeth.

"Great..."

Kyouko stepped through the thick airlock door. Something flashed and for a moment the redhead imagined seeing the shadows of her own bones projected on the wall.

"I have good news for you. I couldn't observe any pathological conditions in your system.", the speaker announced. "You are suitable for the tests, and it's high time to start! Test chamber one, class two opponent. You'll probably experience strange phenomena but you don't have to worry about the distortions of the laws of physics. These are corrected by the safety inertial frame of the Power Station."

The airlock opened and something sucked out the air like there was vacuum outside. Kyouko just felt she wouldn't have any choice but to follow the wind to the next bare room. She could only take a glimpse of the shiny metallic honeycomb pattern embedded in the yellowish, transparent wrapping on the walls before splashing into an invisible chunk of water. It was a familiar feeling: as the living sea surrounded her with crayon-drawn corals, floating schools of fish and dancing light over the sea bed, everything fell into place. Indeed, this test wasn't the least bit unusual. She was alone in a labyrinth and her opponent was a witch, just the way it used to be. She allowed herself a grim crooked smile at this thought: she must have gone crazy to think of those days with nostalgia.

She took the little pistol she had been hiding under her clothes and cocked it. Despite its size the semi-automatic W17 gun was suitable to dispatch most familiars and witches and she wouldn't have any chance against the rest anyway. She remembered the only fight where it would have been useless, the biggest battle of Mitakihara that she got dragged into by that lunatic Homura. The battle that had marked the beginning of her new life. At last Kyouko curled her mouth in a predatory grin. Her hunting instinct stirred. Face to face with a witch, one against one. No magic, no remote controlled body, no support team, no black box, no computer navigation; just her brains, her gun, her muscles and senses augmented by a standard dose of Cortexiphan.

She sneaked from coral to coral over the slanted sea bed, descending toward the heart of the bubble universe. The water around her became darker and the colorful little fish scarcer by every step she took. But something else began to glow in the dusk: a drifting figure, not far ahead of her. It was a young girl, not exactly a child, not yet an adult. Her hair floating around her head looked bluish gray in the twilight, but the turquoise light radiating from her naked body became stronger by the minute and it revealed soon that she wore a fish tail down from her waist. Kyouko sneaked closer to have a look at the mermaid's face.

"Come on, show yourself, tell me the weakness of the witch!"

But she wasn't so confident anymore. The Cortexiphan in her veins whispered that what that face would reveal wouldn't be the witch's weakness. And when she finally got a glimpse the sight almost brought her down. The floating, sleeping mermaid wore Sayaka's face. Suddenly her blue eyes opened and fixed on Kyouko, then bubbles streamed forth from her mouth.

"Love me...", the bubbles whispered. Kyouko didn't know who the words were addressed to and she felt guilty enough without knowing or admitting that she had known it for years. But this little lapse almost got her killed: four series of needle-sharp teeth clashed where she had been a tenth of a second before.

The girl's fingers pulled the trigger by themselves while she sprang aside with all her strength. Nothing itself bit off a large chunk of the attacking beast's head. The empty sphere imploded, sea water and tufts of tissue filled its perfect vacuum. The abyssal monster sank into the mud with the remaining half of its head. The mermaid shrieked in bubbles while the tentacle that controlled her dragged her away too. Pink gobbets were floating in the creature's wake for a second then the whole sea collapsed. A moment later only a deep black grief seed left, swaying on its tip over the bone dry concrete floor. Kyouko pocketed the little magical stone knowing that it wasn't exactly safe.

"You've spent 85 seconds in the bubble.", the speaker announced. "The next test chamber contains a class three opponent. You stand a good chance against it. Unfortunately you'll fight a class four witch instead."

"Not gonna happen!", Kyouko sassed. "What kind of an oddball doesn't know that test subjects have to eat sometimes? I go get some food now."

"There's a fully equipped kitchen right behind the next test chamber.", Meuko answered. "I'll open the door if you pass the test."

Kyouko decided not to respond to her defeat. This unknown someone messing with her from behind a microphone annoyed her, but she didn't want to gratify them by losing her cool. "I'll be Homura to you!", she thought. Then she corrected the thought. She'd be Homura from a number of loops earlier, before she started to come apart at the seams. She regretted a bit that she had cut her hair, it would have been elegant to just flip it back as an answer.

She kept walking anyway, making a mental map of everything she passed by. She was looking for a flaw on the walls or anywhere else, for any chance to leave the path that they forced on her. But there was nothing on walls of the former mineshaft but that perfect, translucent honeycomb pattern. Then, suddenly, something lit up the metal mesh ahead.

Kyouko curiously dashed toward the strange light, just to nearly fall on her face in a pair of feet in once high-heeled shoes conveniently left in her way. She stopped to observe the person they belonged to: it was a dark skinned girl around fifteen. Her once elegant high school blazer and painstakingly made cornrow braids made a sharp contrast with her pose. She looked simply tossed against the wall, together with a perfectly mundane machete in her reach. She seemed semi-conscious at best as she sat there clutching a horribly darkened soul gem.

"No, you don't...!", Kyouko snarled in ever-useful English and grabbed the girl at her blazer.

"I'm Nyameka Gretel Mathibe.", the unknown girl deliriously introduced herself. Even in this state she seemed trying to impress her with the name. She was a relative of the originator of the Power Station. Possibly his daughter.

"Good for you.", the redhead growled. "No, actually too bad for you. Is this glowing in this goddamn mesh your doing?"

It was a rhetorical question, but the other girl answered.

"They have already started to collect my energy. Fly for your life... a few more minutes and only a magical girl can stop me!"

"Don't even dream about it!" Kyouko took the grief seed from her pocket and pressed it against the other girl's soul gem.

"How could you...?", Nyameka asked in disbelief. "I can't feel your magic. Why do you have this?"

Kyouko shook her hand as an answer.

"Special Agent Sakura Kyouko. Normally you wouldn't last long with this weak grief seed, so brace yourself! It'll be a bit shaky but nothing I couldn't handle!"

The little black gem crossed the point where it couldn't be any darker. Its surface cracked and crashed in, then the ornate grief seed collapsed into a plain black orb. A whirling disk of darkness formed around the floating little ball as its gravity kept on drawing the despair out of the soul gem that was glowing in a brighter shade of red by the minute. Black particles split off the inner edge of the disk and splashed into the liquid looking surface. Nyameka watched the tiny, black hole looking phenomenon with eyes widened in terror. The spectacular spatial distortions around the collapsed grief seed made her dizzy, then she fell headfirst into the nut-sized orb of darkness, together with Kyouko.

Splash. Debris and bubbles floated around her for a moment then they began to ascend with swaying moves, into the direction she suspected the surface. Her quickly pulsing soul gem was floating before her, as a warning of a witch, very-very close.

They hid in the shadow of a wrecked ship. The old vessel's deck was full of skeletons, all dressed in surprisingly modern clothes. They could have possibly been the family or friends of the witch, and to Nyameka's relief they didn't move.

The master of the labyrinth was probably angry. It didn't waste time or energy to leave baits for the girls but rushed at them from overhead. It was much larger than before and it had grown a whole bouquet of tentacles. Every one of them ended in a human figure, some were familiar to Kyouko, the others probably targeted the other girl. In the new set she recognized not only the mermaid Sayaka, but Mami, Madoka, Homura and even Walter. Then she had to run. She dragged Nyameka along while giving her a short, telepathic briefing.

"Stay still. We'll have to handle this without your magic, otherwise we'd stake our lives in vain! Have you ever shot with a real gun?"

The other girl shook her head.

"No problem, it's a toy gun. Where it hits it teleports a cubic meter of anything out of the labyrinth. If you curl up you might even escape with it... if it doesn't cut you in half, that is. It works much more wickedly outside, it chews you well before spitting you out. Here, it's cocked. When you pull the trigger it'll shoot and reload, you won't have to do anything. There are a dozen bullets in it. Use it only when you're sure about the hit, if it's possible."

She took out a somewhat larger handgun.

"And this one has explosive bullets so you'd better stay clear of the witch."

Then she suddenly veered tugging Nyameka with her while a bunch of girls in red scattered every which way with spears in their hands. The multiplying targets distracted the witch, it hesitated for a moment before making itself after a decoy. Kyouko fired and the explosion tore a hole in the creature's flank, right where the decoy stabbed it with her illusion spear. This time the giant anglerfish couldn't be taken out with a single shot, but luckily it fell for the trick and snapped at the bait. It furiously tore the girl in red apart, and the scattered pieces disappeared in a few seconds.

Kyouko took advantage of the opportunity and landed another hit. This time the bullet entered through the eye of the witch and the explosion ripped off half of its head, but even this wasn't enough now. The anglerfish wormed itself alive in the mud and it only stuck out a single tentacle.

Nyameka knew this figure only from the news and it was a relief. She had felt bad enough with her dead, disappeared and convicted family members and friends. Her relief was short-lived: the pale, thin, raven haired girl conjured up a submachine gun and quickly brought down every decoy in sight. Then the thin girl aimed at them, and... she dropped the gun. Her eyes widened with surprise as she pawed the huge blade sticking out of her chest.

"The others were indeed illusions, but this one is real!", Kyouko snarled from behind her. Nyameka looked with her jaw dropped to where Kyouko should have been. All the time she had thought that the real one was next to her, but now she saw nothing there.

The skinny girl fell on her knees and hugged Kyouko's with a pleading look. Next to her another tentacle plunged out of the mud without warning.

"Kyouko-chan, we haven't done any harm to you! Please don't hurt Homura-chan! She was just protecting me! Who would remain for me on this world without her?"

It was an outrageously adorable, pink haired girl, a bit shorter than Nyameka and Kyouko: another famous, familiar face to the African magical girl.

Kyouko was taken aback. She hated the most when a witch looked inside her head and used what it found. This one must have been expecting her not being able to kill her best friends, even knowing that everything was a lie. It knew how she feared for them. No, it wasn't a simple lie. It was something atrocious. Kyouko stabbed the wet eyed Homura again, cursing like a sailor. Tears under the sea? She must have been in some corny soap opera... She kicked the snarling, charging Madoka in the chest then she pulled the blade of the machete out of the lifeless body.

Suddenly she lost her balance. She was grabbing the hilt of the knife that she stuck in the mud – just to realize that the ground beneath her feet wasn't mud at all. The remains of the anglerfish's head blasted out of the seabed and she was left there hanging from the beast's maimed nose by her weapon. She kicked off the enormous body leaving the knife and fired another explosive round.

"Drop dead already, you bastard!", she gritted. Another explosion in the monstrosity's head. At times like this it was better not to think about who the witch had possibly been. Luckily there was nothing human in this one, save for the figures on the end of its tentacles.

The monster just didn't listen. Its mouth gaped open and not minding its missing half jaw it charged at her again. Kyouko heard a series of quiet clicks next to her. Giving a gun to the newbie proved useful after all. Hole, hole, hole, hole... this time the creature was left without a head, and it was too much even for it. The sea condensed again and the bloody pink drops rained down the same way as earlier, just to disappear without a trace. The shiny black grief seed was there, gently swaying on its tip like nothing had happened.

"Wow, you're really Sakura Kyouko!"

"I've just said..."

"Anyone can say!", Nyameka answered snappily. "But I recognized Rosso Fantasma! It's really you! I've always wanted to meet you! Or Kaname Madoka or Akemi Homura! They were them, right? The black haired must have been Akemi, the pink one Kaname! It must have been these two! But I thought them a bit different. Are they really a skinny crybaby and a little cutie? I thought they were real veterans! And Tomoe Ma..."

"Oi, wait a minute, okay?", Kyouko grumbled. She pocketed the grief again and looked at Nyameka in anger. "If you know us this damn well, why the hell have you become a magical girl? You look new to it, you must have known that it's a suicide!"

"I wanted my dad to succeed, to serve his people well, I wanted to be proud of him! I thought that I'd look you up after they granted my wish so I wouldn't turn into a witch!"

Kyouko buried her face in her hands.

"You're more than a little cheeky, rookie! I might even like it... but it's not that easy to outsmart the Incubators. You might know enough about this _Power Station_, but I'd better not interrogate you now... I already have a clue so I'd just like to hear two simple, one-bit answers, yes or no. Is this how your wish came true?", she casually gestured around, meaning the whole facility.

"Y-yes...", Nyameka admitted in shame.

"Does the _Power Station_ extract witch energy?"

Eyes wide open in horror.

"Yes..."

"I have no more questions. You've been sold down the river proper. Try not to think about it for now, because this witch would kill us for sure if we tried to use the grief seed again. You have no idea how much stronger it was than earlier, but you can add it again to what you've seen. Or take the square of it. I'd rather kill you then, that would be much better for the both of us.

Nyameka was ashamedly studying the floor with her downcast eyes.

"Alright... let's go get some food, I'm starving!", the redhead directed her toward the kitchen.

It was really packed full. Kyouko filled her light backpack with biscuits, chocolate and condensed milk. She didn't care the taste nor the healthiness, she only cared about gathering the most calories in the available volume. When she finished she packed full a table too and she sat down to eat with her MD78 in her reach. Nyameka was just standing there tongue-tied. Now she sat down too as Kyouko pointed at the chair at the other side of the table.

"What did you expect, Arnold Schwarzenegger with long hair?", Kyouko asked after eating for a few minutes.

Nyameka didn't seem to get it so she explained.

"Just because someone goes back in time to protect another, it won't make her a Terminator. Not even if that someone fights like Homura. You want a veteran? You can have it. I've already fought her, and I don't recommend you to even try. She's weaker than me and weighs like nothing but she can be ungodly fast, in a different way than anyone else. It's a remnant of her magic, like my Rosso Fantasma. But she doesn't like to fight at all. I don't even know why she's doing this job. You called her a skinny crybaby? You know, after the things she's gone through it's really something that she still can cry. I'd surely have gone insane at the quarter of that time loop, but she made it. Okay, she might not be all there and she sticks to Madoka like glue, but still, she's just a girl. A very good girl, if you look past the surface. Just like Madoka. They perfectly fit together, and they both are really good friends of mine. And now that I think, I probably know very well why they are still fighting."

"But listen! We have more important things to do than sitting and chatting here. I tell you what we're going to do now. We go and shoot a few Incubators. Aren't you usually followed by such a sneaky little rat?"

"Tweebey can't be too far.", Nyameka answered. "He's just disappointed now, I guess."

"If you see it, kill it. We can rule out my guns, they wouldn't leave anything usable. What magical weapon do you have?"

"Flammable liquid. I can shape it to make anything that burns. Flamethrowers, incendiary bombs, burning rain. This kind of things."

Kyouko shook her head.

"We should get something gentler. This blade will do for now. I just have to be a bit more violent.", she picked up a short, blunt junk of a knife from the counter.

"Why would you kill it? It always comes back."

"That's good because we need more of it!", she answered then she switched to a louder voice. "Oi, Meuko! If you leave us alone with these stupid witch fights I can show you something far more interesting! I can already tell you that if these witches were class two and four, you can surely execute me with a class six..."

"This thing you want to show me... does it make energy extraction more efficient?", they heard the speaker.

Nyameka was appalled.

"I can't believe you're voluntarily chit-chatting with it!"

"Why not? We don't have to like each other to do business!"

"You've just lectured me about doing business with the Incubators! How exactly is it better to associate with an AI?"

"I used to be a magical girl, it's my specialty to negotiate with the devil!", Kyouko grinned biting into an apple.

She wasn't even surprised. Instead, she exerted her brain to take advantage of this new piece of information.

"No, Meuko.", she answered after a minute of chewing. "But I can show you how can upset anyone's applecart who wants to extract that energy. You said you have some private research too, didn't you? Are you happen to be interested in making me a witch? Just because you tried earlier. I say it was hopeless. But if you help me, you can have two subjects at once!"

Nyameka was struck dumb and Kyouko was immensely grateful for this.

"Not exactly. But I'm interested in this method. What do you want in return?"

"A biochemical laboratory will do for now. I guess you have something like that around."

"There's such research going on in this facility. But you can't probably get in the lab through the corridors."

"We are underground, there must be ventilation in every single room.", Kyouko replied. "Just navigate me, everything else is my business!"

"All right. You can access a suitable air duct in the north wall, two meters above the floor. The grill is held by normal screws. Turn right at the first junction, then climb out through the fourth grill. There are scientists inside and two guards in front of the door."

Kyouko renewed their conversation while crawling along the air duct.

"I'll need one of the scientists as an aid. That guy will learn an unhealthy amount about us, but it would be unfair to make them help us then murder them, right? Could you mess up their memories, knock them out for several days, or something similar? You experiment on people, after all... By the way, aren't you afraid of someone recording what you told me?"

"That someone has accidentally recorded silence. Probably because of a contact fault in the microphones. And you can do anything you wish to that researcher. I don't understand why, but I can promise not killing him while he doesn't pose an immediate threat."

"Good. Could those microphones malfunction for a few more minutes? Together with the cameras."

She peeked through the fourth grill. Two men in lab coats were standing behind the tables, an African and a Japanese looking. They were dripping unknown solutions into Petri dishes, examining other dishes under microscopes and taking notes. Kyouko made sure that there was no one else in the room and the scientists were immersed in what they were doing, then she silently dismounted the grill and leaned it against the wall of the air duct. She closed her eyes for a moment and disappeared from Nyameka's sight.

The Japanese scientist was the first the collapse followed by the other who didn't even notice what happened. It was a bizarre sight how the bodies floated to the wall by themselves, their wrists and ankles got tied with duct tape and their mouth wrapped by the same invisible force.

Cabinets opened and closed as Kyouko browsed through their content, then the lab's double door followed. Very soon the two guards outside lied down to take a nap. Then the redhead appeared, she dragged the unconscious black scientist out of the lab through the airlock, locked the door and broke the key into the lock. When she finished she crashed every camera in the room. Then she pulled a rubber glove on the only one she spared and waved to Nyameka to come and began to bring the Japanese scientist around.

"If you do what I say you might survive the next day.", she said when the man finally looked at her.

The scientist's eyes widened as he saw her face but he couldn't answer.

"So you recognized me. Good. Then you know that I'm not joking. And that this _Power Station_ has been noticed at high places. You can be sure that even if I disappeared this case wouldn't be closed. The next team has probably already prepared to intervene. Now I'll remove the tape from your mouth, but you won't speak unless I ask you. Just try to shout and you'll be dead."

The middle-aged balding man blinked then he nodded. Kyouko tore down the tape in one motion, like she tested if her captive can stay silent. The test was a success, the only sound the scientist made was a quiet hiss.

"Good. As you can see, I'm not alone. My friend here is a magical girl. You must know what that means: she needs medical help."

"I'm not skilled at..", the man began.

"You don't have to. This is why I'm here.", Kyouko cut him short. "But it helps to have an assistant. If I didn't screw up something Meuko is blind in this room right now and she doesn't even have hands to begin with. Okay, let's start with a question... have you been working with Incubators?"

"Yes... they take part of power generation supervision and background research. Sometimes they even visit this very laboratory."

"Through that door?", Kyouko gestured at the hopelessly jammed airlock.

"No one knows how they move about. They usually just step out of the shadows."

"We need a few, in dead condition.", the girl stated without so much as a blink. "If you have some calling signal for them, use it!"

"We usually message them from the computers."

"Convenient. Meuko, call an Incubator!", she turned toward the covered camera.

"No one else can see us, you understand?", the girl asked, or much more instructed the AI.

Before she could have answered Kyouko pulled the rubber glove off the camera and aimed it at an empty operating table.

"See? Some humans do keep their word."

The answer arrived in a physical form. Kyouko was upon the appearing alien in the blink of an eye and rammed the blunt knife into its head. A moment later the black and white furry creature was lying stretched on the floor.

"So you aren't that omniscient...!", said Kyouko through her gritted teeth.

One more move, one more furry body. It was the aliens' bad habit to immediately return when killed. But the little bastard would surely learn from this second time...

The next instance appeared behind her back and had a good look.

"Well, well, Sakura Kyouko, did you pop up here too?"

It was surprised to see her, just like the tied up scientist. So Meuko hadn't given her away. It was good news.

"I am aware that you need this body too, but couldn't you leave the next one alone?", the alien asked.

"You're curious, aren't you?"

In the next moment they had three bodies because Nyameka quickly killed this one with a scalpel.

"Thank you, Kyouko, I needed it.", the Namibian girl said while she placed the corpses on the table. Kyouko gave her a grim smile. Anyone who got to know the Incubators would reach the point where they could kill them with pleasure. Then they would get tired of it. The rookie was still at the first step.

"Where do you store solvents?", Kyouko asked the still tied up man.

"In the next row, the second cabinet from the left. I can help you if you released me."

"I can manage myself, thank you.", she opened the cabinet. "Acetonitrile... this will do."

She grabbed a sufficiently large bowl, filled it with the content of a few bottles then dipped the corpses in the liquid. While they were dissolving she released the Japanese scientist.

"Assemble some power supply for electrolysis. It would be nice to have a few hundred volts and watts, but the most important is the waveform: it must be a 33488-hertz half sine. Seven octaves above middle C, plus harmonics, so to speak. I want to see the current on the scope, and I need two pots for the frequency and the voltage."

Then she turned to Nyameka.

"Lie down on this table. You don't have to undress, it doesn't matter what you do with your body, just give me your gem."

"What do you want to do with it?"

"What do you think? I'll drill a hole in it then crush it when it's weakened."

The African girl was definitely reluctant to hand her soul gem to Kyouko, who tried to reassure her.

"If you stay in the team you'll see wackier things. Walter's science includes a lot of boldly simple and illogical things. I couldn't even think about such a thing, but he is... he was Walter. You don't have to worry, it's a common method, we did the same thing to Homura. Except we had to wait until the last minute to cut her gem out of the amber because Kyubey had already scratched it... so we had to keep her body on life support while cutting it out of the amber otherwise it would have rotten on us... but believe me, I had to undergo something even worse. It's not always good to be the first... sorry, I forgot I still need your body! Stretch your arm, I need a few deciliters of your blood for the tuning process."

She filtered the remaining tufts of fur out of the suspicious looking liquid, mixed it with the blood and seasoned it with various salts.

"Now come the electrodes. We'll bind the magnets' receptors to your DNA. Wow, this sauce looks gross... and I'll inject you with it in the end! If you were a normal person you'd surely kick the bucket in an hour..."

Then she faced the camera.

"Now look here, Meuko! The point of this whole mess is to keep the right waveform! It keeps changing as the saturated magnets accumulate at the anode, so I'll constantly have to follow the process with the pots. I turn the display so you can see what I'm doing."

"It doesn't make any sense.", the Incubator commented. "The intermediary agent wasn't designed for this. We don't even know why it works with humans. You're doing something very interesting, but we don't even have a theory to explain what's happening."

"I don't understand either, but we did it several times when we didn't have proper equipment. But why don't you ask Walbey if you're so curious?"

"We've already asked, but he wouldn't answer. Why aren't _you_ afraid of us finding out your secret?"

"I wouldn't believe you if you told me you haven't already seen. You guys just sneak in everywhere and poke your noses into everything."

Kyouko hung the electrodes in the opposite sides of the bowl, watching the screen and the surface in turns, modifying the voltage and frequency until she saw an expanding black cloud in the reddish liquid. It took at least half an hour for her to speak again.

"It's going to hurt. Doctor, you should hold her down for a few seconds..."

Though Nyameka had been anxiously watching what Kyouko was doing, she wasn't prepared for the pain that hit her when the diamond edged drill bit through the surface of her soul gem. Luckily she immediately lost her consciousness. Kyouko dipped the beat-up gem in the middle of the black cloud then cranked up the voltage. The black cloud turned reddish again and standing waves emerged on its surface while Nyameka stopped breathing. Then Kyouko sucked this red liquid up with an immense syringe and pumped it all in the other girl's vein. She waited a few minutes then she fished the now translucent smoke-colored gem out of the remaining liquid. Finally she smashed the gem with a hammer.

"The operation was a success, the patient died!"

It was a bad joke, but true.

"Enjoy your new life, rookie..."

Said rookie was fighting the difficulties of breathing, being very far from enjoying that new life. As the splinters of the gem sprayed all over the table just to quickly evaporate, Nyameka's dark eyes sprang open and she stared in the distance. Her face distorted, her body arched and she desperately gulped for air. Her limbs made pointless moves as her subconscious was gauging this new kind of connection with her body, then she stretched again, limp like a broken doll.

"I hope the vent works well...", Kyouko remarked while she poured the remaining muddy liquid into an air-tight container.

* * *

><p>AN: Back to Hochfeld where we left Kyouko. She'll show you a bit of the new world's science... I had been curious for a long time what would happen if you overcharged a grief seed. More fringe science, of course

Also, did you know how post-magical girls reproduce? Now you will

Tags: Sakura Kyouko, Meuko, Nyameka Gretel Mathibe, witches (okay, one witch twice), witch's brew, bold practical (ab)use of fringe science , gravitational collapse, Kyouko in sempai modo


	4. Iris

**Iris**

_v0.9_

[Mitakihara City]

It was evening again, this time by their own time. The two girls were sitting in Madoka's room, dressed in pyjamas. Actually the pinkette was lying on her belly while she was looking for answers on her laptop while Homura was typing the report about their London mission.

But mostly she was sitting before the screen, with her face buried in her hands.

"I'm so sorry, Madoka... Even I wouldn't have thought that we'd kill others' favourite storybook heroines when we applied for this job..."

"Homura-chan, this is horrible! I had seen many witches before, but she was different!"

Homura sadly shook her head.

"I haven't seen such a witch either! She didn't just look human, she was lucid and suffering. But I think that witches rarely feel well, it's just we don't understand them."

"And now that we... killed her... what will happen to her?", Madoka asked.

"But you know as much as I know what the regulation says. She's going to be buried together with the other grief seeds two kilometers under Mojave Desert. There they'll freeze her in amber and guard her 24 hours a day. And it's the UNIT's commander-in-chief's responsibility to implode the whole tunnel if such danger arose that our civilization couldn't guarantee its safety anymore."

"I know that, Homura-chan! But are you sure she won't keep suffering in there? You said that we can revive a witch if the we make grief seed absorb too much misery. What if she's still dreaming inside and we've just pushed her deeper in her own hell? It can't be good."

Homura froze. Dreaming inside the amber...? She knew the feeling. She went through that hell and she could never fully recover. She didn't want to think of the many buried witches – but they possibly could do something for this one.

"You think what I think, Madoka!"

"We should ask Walbey. They'd never let us in there, but he could probably manage to free her..."

Madoka could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had seen the other girl grinning like this within their six years together. But now Homura was happy that she could do something for Madoka and ease her own conscience at once. They would break lots of rules as grief seeds were basically treated like biological weapons, and it made their daily good deed exciting.

The dark haired girl didn't hesitate but called Walbey's laboratory at the Harvard University. Astrid appeared on the screen, this time she was alone.

"I'm sorry girls, but he's walking Gene at the ballpark. I can call him in, or I can deliver your message, if you like."

"Thank you, Astrid, we'd really like to talk to him.", Homura answered.

It would have been easier is Walbey kept your cellphone with him... but she knew that it was impossible. Not only because the little creature didn't have a pocket, he could have used a simple backpack after all. The real problem was the complex, wardrobe sized contraption standing in his laboratory. This machine converted the faux Incubator's thoughts into electric signal that symbolized sonic waves, and it was his only way to communicate with anyone not in his close proximity.

Madoka giggled as the creole woman turned her back to the camera and stepped out of its sight. They had rarely been around Boston so they could see the odd pair walking in the park only once, but she was not likely to forget the sight for the rest of her life. They had seemed to get along really well.

The University administration was proud to provide home for the renegade alien. The cow-riding little white animal was a popular attraction – because Walbey was officially known as a rebellious alien who was siding with the Earthlings. The renegade Incubator arrived short after Dr Walter Bishop fell into a coma in the infirmary of the Wissenschaft Prison in Frankfurt. His real identity was an open secret, it would have been awkward to talk about it, and no one had ever tried. The world needed the mad scientist who started the decay of the Universe to be punished, and the world needed Dr Walter Bishop, the genius who could perhaps stop this decay.

Homura didn't even have the time to think this over, they heard the moo of a cow very soon. The expected white furry snout appeared on the screen, complete with that familiar permanent smile and enthusiastic red eyes.

"Good morning... evening, girls! What can I do for you two? Apart from the revision of your Cortexiphan dose, Homura! Feeling ill from entering a simple labyrinth can be dangerous!", he warned her. It was rather worrying how he looked just as cheerful as ever, apart from a little head shake. The girls couldn't even know how he was coping with his forced animal role. They hoped that his family and friends who were by his side could support him.

"Walbey, we'd like to ask you for something. Something big.", Homura began. "We're worried about this last witch. You have seen the records, haven't you?"

"I have indeed...", he stared at them from behind the monitor for a while. He was probably daydreaming, the girls guessed. In the meantime he picked a Pocky from a mug with his paw and started chewing. He had got the first packet from Kyouko and he often ordered Pockies since then.

"Strange... Did you know that my sense of taste is so different in this body? This stick, for example, reminds me of curry. Belly loved this blend, he often ordered it for our night experiments."

The girls were waiting patiently. After a minute of thinking and chewing Walbey continued.

"If you find those events strange, I agree with you. To have such conversation with a witch, even indirectly... is unusual. But what would you like me to do? I'd gladly have a chat with her. Or interrogate her, if you like."

"Walbey, please rescue her from being ambered! I think she's still conscious and keeps suffering!", Madoka exclaimed. "I'm afraid we made a big mistake, but... I really don't know what else we could have done."

She knew exactly what she would have liked to do. She wished to bring every witch back, to save them all, to reverse the destruction the Incubators brought on their victims and the world. Secretly she hoped that one day they could do this too. Once in a while she had thought of turning the weapon of her wish against them. She was backed by the whole huge organization that existed to save magical girls. They surely wouldn't let her turn into a witch. Even if no one else would help, Homura would be there with an amber grenade and she'd carry the frozen Madoka even on her back to the nearest laboratory where Madoka could get her soul magnets too.

But these days the Incubators were more careful, they dissected and analyzed the wishes before freeing their contractees' power to make them real. There was nothing else left for her but to fight for those she could still help. And while she was fighting she eventually grew out of the age when the aliens were interested in her.

"It's decided then!", Walbey smiled. It was his only expression, though. "I'll send a message to Nina Sharp, she has her men in the Repository... If everything goes well, it will be on the way to the Kazamino lab soon. And I'd like to see you two there in the morning the day after tomorrow. There's something else I'd like to tell you privately. Better be cautious!"

"Thank you, Walbey!"

The two girls felt a bit relieved now that they broke the ice. It was a bit strange that Walbey would come to see them in person, but everything had started the same way after all... Madoka decided that it was time to celebrate. They did rarely drink alcohol, but now she poured two shots of her birthday whisky that they got from Junko and clinked their glasses together.

Madoka was aware that Homura wouldn't ever do such things without her. Despite the years since their victory the other girl still didn't know how to enjoy life. Possibly she couldn't believe she deserved to. Madoka took a deep breath. Of course, that past wasn't so easy to redeem. Homura had grown up among doctors and nurses, she had been sickly, weak and shy. She had only one strength: it was her will, but she hadn't even known about it back then. She had been all alone, without a friend, except for the first Madoka who gave her soul for a kitten's life, the Madoka who was now resting in peace, buried under a heavy pile of time weighing a hundred months and six years. Very few could have kept their sanity through that hundred months. Even Homura could only have a narrow escape as a dangerous borderline witch, frozen in a chunk of amber.

When Homura returned to Mitakihara she visited Madoka right after her own rent. The whole family was home, and Junko was cold sober and determined to give Homura a piece of her mind. She knew too much to be really cross with her, yet she felt that the girl would deserve at least this much for making her daughter cry through the last two months of the school year. But when she saw Homura in the door she dropped the whole idea. The girl came soaked to the skin but she didn't seem to care, or even realize. She was standing outside in the ice-cold rain, and before anything else she started to apologize to Junko. Madoka's mother dragged her in the house in shock, then her shock turned to anger as she thoroughly questioned the drenched girl while drying her. Junko's anger was directed against Homura's landlord who just pitched out the girl's belongings to the corridor after her disappearance, but first and foremost against her parents who had long given up to care for their seriously ill child.

As Junko was watching Homura everything fell into place. Now she could easily imagine what she had only heard about: a magical girl with a pitch black soul gem. She could perfectly understand Madoka who would have surely worried sick for the raven haired girl if she had lost sight of her again, even for a minute.

So Junko decided to keep her with the family for at least a few days. These days became weeks, months, then years as the parents saw how Madoka was sticking to the dark haired girl. She took into her head with great determination that she would heal Homura-chan. She felt since her visit in Boston that there was something wrong with Homura, even more so than before Walpurgisnacht. Her suspicion proved true when she woke with a start in the middle of the first night and she found the guest futon empty. She got up anxiously to look for Homura and found her in the bathroom. The girl was leaning over the bowl, keeping her now disheveled hair back with one hand.

"Madoka, I'm so sorry that I burden you with it too...", she apologized with a deathly pale face. "I don't know if I can ever get away from these nightmares. They've been haunting me since I first saw you die and they got even worse with every cycle. I thought that they would leave me after we defeated Walpurgis, but I was wrong. The worst was still to come, inside the amber! I had thought that even time would be frozen in there... Madoka, I had never been so wrong before! I dreamed through the whole time, and I still can't shake off the memories of that empty, misshapen Mitakihara. I skimmed through the whole city looking for you but you were nowhere and there was no exit. I was scared that you might have sold your soul to Kyubey to save me and that was why I couldn't find you. In the meantime I exactly knew where I was and that there was really no exit and it was impossible to do anything for you from in there. And those children were there too... they knew my thoughts, they were waiting for me everywhere just to laugh at me! They mocked me, threw things at me then they cozied up to me and called me to a better world. Every time I close my eyes they are still here, grinning inside my head... Madoka, I really wanted to die, but I couldn't even do that...!

When Madoka had first (for their last timeline) met her, the wall had already been cracking around her jaded soul. Now that the (hundred) evil months were over she couldn't maintain her stoic mask anymore. She still tried to halfheartedly pretend for the rest of the world, but she was way too tired to act when she was alone with Madoka.

She let her tears trickle down her face, shaking with silent sobs. She still couldn't fully believe that it was all over, that they both survived the night of Walpurgis and they weren't even doomed to turn into witches. Like a fairy tale. She was desperately clinging to the real, living Madoka while she dragged her back to her room and kept her in her arms for the rest of the night, guarding her dreams. While Homura was at last sleeping still Madoka watched her face among her dark, tangled tresses. She began to grasp how badly the other girl needed her.

"Poor Homura-chan, you struggled so much to protect me... now it's my turn to protect you!", she whispered into the darkness with determination.

From that time on they didn't even think of the guest futon anymore.

The following day Madoka learned that no matter how hard they tried to keep quiet they woke up her parents. Madoka told everything to her mother one-on-one.

"That poor girl's so thin that she doesn't even need the half of the bed... 40 percent will be more than enough for her!"

Even though Junko was joking she was apparently worried for Homura, she just didn't yet know how she could help her.

Later, as time went by, Madoka had to realize that her ordinary life was over. School seemed to have lost its point, they were just hanging around aimlessly in the strange glass building, hand in hand, always heavy hearted. Even their teachers didn't seem to resent at them – but they used the two damaged girls as an object lesson for their students about contracting with little white creatures. And the two were ever so slightly happy to help to scare the potential victims away from the Incubators.

Madoka was relieved when her parents realized it too and let her do what she felt the most useful. They understood that it was the best for their broken daughters - because they got used to think Homura as their child too. Soon enough the two girls found themselves in the newly founded UN/VP, together with many former magical girls. Madoka had never had a contract, yet she did exceptionally well in the Cortexiphan tests. Probably the time loop that made her so promising target for the Incubators made her latent potential more accessible, so she did better against hostile magic than most former magical girls.

At long last they could ease their conscience. In this team they could save a number of magical girls from their certain fate. Madoka finally felt to live a meaningful life and she was grateful to see that it helped Homura too: she woke up less and less frequently in the middle of the night with terrified gaze, drenched in cold sweat. If she'd still had a soul gem its darkness would possibly be slowly fading now.

But the dark haired beauty was a difficult girl. She was thankful to Madoka's parents for everything and she did her best to be nice and polite to them, but she guiltily averted her eyes every time Junko or Tomohisa looked at her. Madoka could finally get out of her why she was so afraid of them.

"Madoka, I feel like a traitor... I should leave before it's too late. They're so nice to me, try to look after me, and I... I turn their only daughter's head behind their backs!"

Her downcast eyes and hot blush made Madoka burst into laughter. Whatever had happened, she just couldn't feel it a disaster.

"Homura-chan, it was already late when you first came here... but you didn't have any ulterior motive when you moved in, did you?"

"N-no way!", the other girl protested vehemently. "No way I would want to taint you, to spoil your future! But I let them keep me here..."

"What if I said that it was me who picked you out?", Madoka winked at her playfully, stroking her face. "That would make them my accomplices. Would you feel any better then?"

Homura's eyes widened.

"Madoka... it's... not possible! You're not like that!"

"No, Homura-chan, I'm not and neither are you. Sometimes things just happen and the best we can do is to let them happen.", Madoka said gently and kissed her for the first time in her life.

"Don't be afraid of mom!", she tried to calm her before dinner. "Do you think she doesn't already know? Do you think she minds? Believe me, you'd notice if she was worried for me..."

This evening Homura tried to force herself not to run away and she began to suspect that Madoka was right. The Kaname parents appreciated her effort and, if it was possible, treated her even more kindly than usual.

Then, after dinner, Junko and Tomohisa exchanged a look. Tomohisa took Tatsuya away but the girls were kept by the table by Junko.

"Madoka, I'd like to talk you about something very important. Homura, I want you to stay too."

Junko's words startled the dark haired girl. Madoka gave her an encouraging smile, but she wasn't entirely calm either. The woman waited for her husband to return before she would start to speak.

"Madoka, I'm really proud of you. You grew up to be a good kid. You don't do anything bad and you don't try to deceive me. The question is, aren't you deceiving yourself? I know that one can't choose the one she loves, but sometimes it takes a while to realize that what she felt was something else. Very few have to go through the things you two had to. It would have been a miracle if it hadn't shocked you. And such a shock can easily mix up your emotions. This is why I ask you to give yourself some time and think it over very carefully. The choice you're about to make could make your life difficult, this world can be surprisingly malignant at times. Beside fighting witches you'd have another battlefield to combat the prejudices every day. Even we get strange looks just because it's your father who stays home and takes care of you while I work. People don't care for one another but they're more than happy to badmouth you should you dare to be different. You have no idea what you'd take upon yourself if you kept on doing this."

The normally pale Homura was now staring at Junko with a dead white face. Things weren't going as well as the ever-optimistic Madoka imagined. Homura felt like running away, packing her every possession into a duffel bag and leaving this house for good. She knew that she was a threat to Madoka and she wanted to end it. But her trembling legs wouldn't obey her vague orders. She cursed her own selfishness that could weaken her this much. Junko saw her struggling. She placed her hand on Homura's and firmly held it on the table.

"I haven't finished yet. You must have a deep look into yourself, the both of you. I know that anything you find there will probably scare you. But you're young, and it's easier to recover in your age. This is your time to learn how to fall down. But you must know that even if you're perfectly sure that these are your true feelings, you won't have to be afraid of us. We will always be by your side, even against the world."

"And don't even think of doing something stupid, Homura!", she warned the black haired girl. "It's us who wanted you here. We've taken a liking to you. We know that you're just as a good girl as Madoka. We know what you've been through, we even have an idea how ill you think of yourself... but even you can't really think that we could just throw you out after this all.", she gave the girl's shaking hand a reassuring squeeze.

Junko didn't talk in vain. Homura got an own room in the Kaname house, though she spent most of her time with Madoka in the pink room. The two girls kept on clinging to each other so much that they could finally convince the parents. Homura irrevocably became a member of the family. Together with Madoka they were Tomohisa's helpful aids, at least when they weren't on a mission. Homura proved to know her way around the kitchen and over time she learned to get along with Madoka's little brother too. Kindergarten and grade school teachers accepted that beside his parents and sister there's one more person, "Homura-nee-chan", who was allowed to take Kaname Tatsuya home. They didn't trouble her with their questions, even though most of them had already heard steep things about her. Could this silent, withdrawn girl be the undead time traveler who had sold her soul and almost died for that other girl, but prevailed against a whole alien race in the end and revealed them to the world? Those who saw her just shook their heads in disbelief.

The two girls often stopped at the park on the way home, and Madoka was always happy to see Homura absorbed in playing with Tatsuya. Sometimes she could even see a real smile on her face.

But there were others than Madoka's family too to participate in their double life. The two other members of their old little team were frequent guests in their house. Mami was easy to catch as she worked at the underground base in the mountains near the neighboring town Kazamino as the "face of the UN/VP". Kyouko was harder to take hold of, she was involved in missions everywhere around the world, not unlike Madoka and Homura – but the nature of her missions was hazy even to them.

When they had returned to Mitakihara, the redhead clearly denied to ever attend to any horribly boring school. She remained somewhere around the Harvard instead to stay with Walter and pick up some knowledge she thought much more useful, and to entertain herself with the mysteries that seemed to always find her there. She hadn't even been seen around Mitakihara for a year, but lately she frequented the city again. Once she accidentally let out that it wasn't even the city that brought her back, it was the company of her friends.

The thought of their red haired friend returned Madoka to the present. She was determined to get out of Walter where Kyouko had lately been. It would be the day after tomorrow.

She had long finished with her drink by now while Homura was still cradling hers. This was one of the things she found so cute in her: she drank so gingerly, in so tiny sips that she reminded Madoka a little kitty who was afraid of burning her tongue. Madoka gave her a beaming smile, hugged her then sat behind her for one of their rituals: she arranged Homura's dark, flowing hair in two long braids.

One of the first things she had noticed about the cool and graceful Homura was the way she wore her hair. Her mystic, shiny black tresses seemed to defy the laws of physics as they split in two behind her back. They were like a message telling that their owner would do the impossible. But back then Madoka had no idea for whom Homura go such length. She also learned it later that her hair practically split out of a habit: it had been braided for so long that it forgot how to be free again. Anyway, Madoka loved this hairstyle so much that she had taken on the responsibility of braiding the other girl's hair every evening. Moreover, when she had first seen the result, she burst into laughter. And if it hadn't been funny enough, Homura put on her old glasses she didn't need anymore and showed her how she looked when they first met. The impression baffled description. Madoka felt like taking her home but she couldn't because they were already there.

She had become thoroughly experienced at braiding the silky black tresses by now. She just had to place the last purple bow and she was ready. The girl sitting before her was the new Homura with her past hair style. Inside and out, she was a strange mix of the person Madoka first met and another from a hundred timelines earlier. But all this mix was Homura, and Madoka accepted her the way she was.

"Come, Homura-chan..."

Madoka threw her arms around the other girl and leaned back together with her. Then they were just lying, staring at each other smiling until the missions,witches and grief seeds faded away, leaving nothing but the two of them.

* * *

><p>AN:

"Anyways, Father looked at that loop of string for a while, and then his fingers started playing with it. His fingers made the string figure called a 'cat's cradle' . . . but he went down on his knees on the carpet next to me, and he showed me his teeth, and he waved that tangle of string in my face. "See? See? See?" he asked. "Cat's cradle. See the cat's cradle? See where the nice pussycat sleeps? Meow. Meow."

_Hah! Some more Vonnegut for GOSE (beside the intro of the 9th chapter, you'll see or have already seen) :D So where's the cat here? Well... Cortexiphan!Homura doesn't wear cat ears, but she definitely isn't far from doing so. I don't even know how this chapter would have been born if I didn't read Rumiberri's "Cat's cradle". But now that I did I can't even deny it. This is the first so yuri-ish thing I've ever written. But one must start it once, I guess._

_What's in this chapter? The two girls and their background. I think I did properly break them... Sealed in amber, together with her pitch black soul gem, ready to die more than anyone else to save Madoka from the Incubators' grip? How could she think she would get away like this? Possibly Mikuni Oriko was guiding my hand when I wrote her attempt years before Rebellion... She'll be in the story later too, out of gratitude. And because the other girls would be in trouble without her..._

_About the title: this is the first and only chapter in GOSE to have a title that doesn't have anything to do with the things that happen in there. It's a ZUN title, like the others. Iris is the track I listened the most reading Cat's Cradle. Grief Syndrome could have possibly been a better title, but that game's by Tasogare Frontier, not ZUN... but... Hopeless Masquerade (chp11) too. Okay, you've cornered me :D_

_(How does it feel to read my incoherent rants anyway?_)

_Tags: Kaname Madoka, Akemi Homura, Kaname Junko, Walbey, flashback, very-very soft MadoHomu, amber, Cortexiphan. Always Cortexiphan._

_Beta read by shiNIN. Comments, reviews, spotting mistakes are appreciated._


	5. Disunified Field Theory of Magic

**Disunified Field Theory of Magic**

_v0.91_

[Hochfeld Power Station, Namibia, 115 feet above sea level]

When Nyameka woke up Kyouko was sleeping in an office chair, resting her head on a desk, using a folded lab coat as a pillow. She kept her gun on the desk, within her reach. Nyameka entertained herself with the thought of sneaking there to lift the pistol, but she felt too nauseous and dizzy for such a joke. On the top of that, she wasn't sure if it would have been safe to remove the IV line from her arm.

To her surprise she couldn't see anyone else in the laboratory. It took a while for her to find Kyouko's hostage, now unconscious, leaning against the wall. The only door was blocked by a pile of lockers and tables, the lens of the only camera was covered by a cleaning cloth. Her savior didn't take any risk.

"Kyuoko!"

She wasn't sure what she wanted to tell her. Perhaps she wanted to thank her.

The redhead turned around with the chair in a fraction of a second and looked at her fully awake.

"So you've survived. Good. This operation is usually but not always successful. You had a fair chance for a nice cyanide poisoning so I administered a lot of sodium nitrite and thiosulphate, because from now on you can't probably heal yourself with magic. By the way, how does it feel not being a lich anymore?"

"A... what?"

"I knew someone who called it a zombie... though I think a _lich_ is a more exact term." Kyouko answered with a wave of her hand. "But I wanted to ask you if you can walk or at least crawl on all fours because we can't stay here."

Nyameka hesitantly nodded.

"Now I can't turn into a witch?", she asked.

"I don't want to lie to you, actually I have no idea. None of us did so far. At least you won't feel worse by the minute just because you exist. You can even feel comfortably depressed and still won't fall down like a rock. But I don't know what will happen if you really give up."

She helped the other girl up to her feet, pulled the needle out of her arm and they took a walk around the lab together.

"Excellent. But I don't think you'd be too lively in the next few weeks. It's time to go to look for a safe place and have a talk. I suspect that you know everything I need to know. Then we can escape when you'll have recovered. Now try to walk on your own. Sit down if you get tired. I'll do some workout too.

Nyameka looked around in the lab. She read the labels of the opened bottles with faint curiosity. She didn't exactly know what they were used for, not even if they were normally used on people. She was grateful for still being alive. When she turned around Kyouko was doing her last few one-arm push-ups.

"I need something to make up for the magic I've lost. You should keep your muscles in shape too. I was devastated when I saw that I couldn't just jump up to roofs bouncing between two walls anymore."

"But now that you exercise you can?", Nyameka asked with surprise. It didn't sound like something a human being could do without magic.

"No. But I can jump up to this air duct. I'll pull you up too."

And she sprang up, grabbed the edge of the hatch and climbed up. Then she turned around, held down her arm and helped the other girl up too. When they were both up in the air duct she re-mounted the grill and crawled a bit along the pipe.

"Meuko, I need something like an access tunnel where we won't be disturbed and that doesn't conduct our voice like this air duct. We'd like to have a talk."

"Go ahead five grills, then you'll see a door. You'd normally need a key card to pass, but now it's open. The corridor behind it turns left after 10 meters, but the energy collection panels were removed from the front wall and there's a tunnel hatch in it. You can reach many rooms from the tunnel, you can even find water and food. The only thing you can't reach from there is the exit. The only way up is the elevator."

"I see. I thought you want to keep us here."

"Now I'm quite sure you'll be suitable for the job I have for you."

So it was a job. Better than an experiment, but something didn't change: she was locked up in here. Kyouko remained silent.

"I even know how to motivate you. You mentioned a few things back in the kitchen which made me pretty sure that you'll stay here of your own volition. I'll tell you later, you should be on your way. You'd like to reach a safe place before the patrol arrives and finds the locked lab. They'll find out that the only way in is the air duct you're in. They'll find Dr Yamanaka too. You should have killed him before leaving, because they'll want to interrogate him. But right because they'll want to question him, they'll take him to the infirmary and once he's there he surely won't wake up if I don't want him to."

The scientist's prospects didn't look too bright, but Kyouko couldn't really blame Meuko for having some basic survival instinct in her program. The motivation she mentioned made Kyouko think hard. What could have been so important that she would want to voluntarily stay here? But lacking any other hint she put the problem away and focused on crawling along the pipe. Sometimes she had to wait for the other girl but they were progressing well. They really found the open door in front of the fifth grill, and the access tunnel hatch was there too. It was almost too good to be true. The AI hadn't lied to them so far, but as far as Kyouko could remember even Kyubey hadn't ever lied - yet it would have been a huge mistake to trust it. It would have helped to know Meuko's own motives because the way things were Kyouko really felt like she was talking with an Incubator. She had to admit that this once Nyameka was right.

"There are no microphones or speakers inside so we can only talk as a last resort.", the AI said. "You two can rest, make a plan B or whatever you like, but I want you here exactly 8 hours from now."

"You bet I'll have that plan B!", the redhead growled as she shut the trapdoor from the inside.

This tunnel was a more spacious and generally more pleasant place than the drafty metal tube they had just crawled through. She could even find alcoves strewn with long forgotten wooden frames, crates and tools. This tunnel looked fitting for a temporary hideout. She planned to explore the possible exits and find a place to rest close to a junction to make cornering them more difficult.

She found a suitable alcove very soon. She leaned Nyameka behind a pile of crates, made her promise to stay there, then left for at least an hour to scout the rest of the tunnel.

When she got back she sat down next to Nyameka and grabbed some food from her backpack.

"Want some?", she held out a pack of biscuits.

The other girl took one and tasted it listlessly.

"I don't understand how can you gobble up this rubbish with such appetite! It must be the bouncing around you always do..."

There had been a time when Kyouko would have strangled her for this remark, but a lot of things happened since then. Now she was just glaring at her with a mix of curiosity and disapproval. They were in Africa and stereotypes of the outside world irreversibly tied famine to this continent. Of course as a daughter of a minister Nyameka was far from starving.

"Well, it's not the best, but we should be happy to have something to eat.", she answered. "You should appreciate food. I don't give you more than a few days and you'll inhale this 'rubbish'. And there are basic things you ought to know. There are laws we cannot shirk. Magical girls need real hope. In every moment of their existence they consume this hope. If they run out of it, they find themselves on the other side in no time. They are hardcore grief seed addicts."

"But you said that we aren't like that anymore."

"No, we don't need grief seeds to stay alive. We can't even use them anymore. But if you'd like to access any of your former magic, even the tiniest speck, you'll have to pay for it. Thermodynamics will always catch up to you, and there's nothing you can do about it, even if you burn a thousand Incubators on a pyre. I've used Rosso Fantasma a lot in the last few days. Someone, somewhere must have found it funny to make me ravenous after using magic, or just moving around or thinking. But at least I can manage within the scope of the First Law of Thermodynamics. And I'm grateful for it, because those little bastards would pin themselves on me otherwise..."

Nyameka couldn't understand everything she said, but she listened her with glittering eyes.

"Then I can use magic too?"

"You have the potential. When that weird bowler guy trained us he said that everyone has it, they just bury it too deep before they grow up. Many children can sense magic before the age of three or four and they see things the adults don't believe. Then they 'sober up' and stop seeing things. But later some of them makes a contract with the Incubators and the little bastards somehow scratch off the layers that cover their true abilities. These children are the magical girls everyone knows. They are the best magic users. Then there are the Cortexiphan children. They were subjected to drug experiments in their early years. I've heard a bit about them, they aren't much better off than magical girls. Please never mention them before Walbey. Thirdly, we get Cortexiphan too to access a bit of our former powers. And last, there's Madoka.

"Is that all? I just take a dose and I'll know what to do?"

The dark-skinned girl's disbelief showed that she began to grasp the concept: there was no free meal.

"You won't. When I got my first dose I got my senses back right away, but it took months to turn on one single light on the 'Jones board' with my mind. Most of us are this way. Somehow it's hard to believe strong enough to really do it. Then when you know the basics you can start to explore what part you can still use and what you've lost. For example, I don't know about anyone who's still able to invoke her magical weapon, even though it's the most basic ability of every magical girl. Walbey thinks it's possible too but he never dared to experiment with doses big enough to allow it. But it's not a big deal. The real bad news is that we are still addicts. Not Cortexiphan addicts, that drug is mostly harmless and hardly addictive in small doses. On the other hand we depend on the soul magnets in our bloodstream. We can't really stock up with them because they're slightly toxic, and with every drop of blood we lose we also lose some magnets. If there isn't enough in your veins they can't connect your body and soul anymore. At that point we'd die of blood loss anyway, but every drop you lose counts and accumulates on the long run, because your body cannot produce new magnets. I don't think I need to explain it any more, we're all girls. If you can avoid every little scratch you may last a year or two, but we usually have check-ups in the nearest lab every six months. I've tried how it feels to skip it for a year: in the last few weeks I felt like I was high while having a terrible hangover. It was scary enough to stop me. All in all, tell me if you're having that feeling. That three Incubators couldn't probably give you a safe reserve, so we'll do anything to keep you out of fight for now."

"I'm starting to get how stupid I was.", Nyameka answered. "Not like when I was about to turn into a witch. Back then everything was like a nightmare... but the way you tell me these makes everything so real. Kyouko, thank you for this second chance you gave me to get things right... at least a few things. Are you here to destroy the Power Station? If so, you can count on me! My father was killed for making it up, but no one has shut it down. To think that I helped him to finish it... you know what would have happened if I could have thought a bit more about it."

"I didn't tell you earlier because I was afraid that I'd just have worsened your situation... but I'm pretty sure that they'd have finished it without you too, and your father would have silenced the same way. They needed a scapegoat they could sacrifice then enjoy the benefits. But I'm pretty sure the Incubators were happy for you... I guess they have a whole division for politicians' children. Oriko was exactly the same."

"I remember when I made my wish Tweebey said that it was a huge gain for a small investment. Now I think I understand... I was really an idiot!"

"I'm glad you get it. Back to your question: I wasn't ordered to, but I can and I'll probably try to shut down the Power Station. Now you should concentrate on recovering. In the meantime we'll surely have a few days to cook up how we can do it without killing everyone inside. I know that every minute counts but I don't yet know what to do. We can't just blow everything up... I don't even know how many people are in here, how many magical girls and how many witches. We might make a huge tear, a second Mecca. And I need details about the faces behind everything. Politicians, scientists, investors. I wouldn't be too surprised to see the whole government involved."

Mecca... a place where the twisted cooperation of the laws of physics and psychology had led to the biggest disaster of the modern world. It was the place of the first real Vortex that witches tore in the fabric of the universe. Cold reality for Kyouko, but even Nyameka knew about it like almost anyone else in the world. The huge crowd in religious ecstasy had attracted witches like a magnet. Those millions were literally been crying for their influence. The Kaaba incident had almost 600 thousand fatalities. The sarcophagus the Saudi hurriedly built around the wormhole was apparently cursed. There were lots of severe accidents during construction works, and the whole building collapsed right before it could have been finished. This last disaster claimed another two thousand lives. Unknown number of people were treated in Saudi hospitals with radiation poisoning and there were an unknown number of casualties with physical or mental injuries.

"I think there weren't too much to see from the outside.", Nyameka said. "This place is well isolated. Meuko got a bunch of sensors so she could even monitor telepathic messages."

Kyouko shook her head.

"All I could see from up there was a bunch of police wagons coming every day. But I think you know much more. Tell me everything because I have to write a report regardless of what happens. And if we collect enough evidence but can't shut down the Power Station this place will most likely be bombed to pieces by the NATO forces and they'll probably put the whole country under a blockade. So it would really be better to stop it more gently from the inside."

"I've been here for a while. I wanted to know how guilty my father was. And I've learned it! He was so guilty it had almost killed me. I owe you my life. I've met a few witches too and I had already suspected how this place works. They collect energy the same way as the Incubators. I've questioned Meuko and looked around in the offices too. I think that damn machine deliberately let me out, she wanted to know something too. I don't know what that could be but I learned a lot of things. For example, they make a drug. They call it '3D'. It has another name, 'Witch Elixir', which sums up its purpose quite well. I even found out who the head researcher is. I had met him earlier, he had visited us a couple of times."

[Kazamino Underground Research Laboratory]

"Remember this face well! His name is David Robert Jones, he's a British citizen and one of the most wanted terrorists. He's engaged in bioterrorism and fringe science in general. We have already met him and unfortunately we suspect him being behind the researches inside the Power Station. Should they do anything in there, one thing is certain: they developed some force field or material that perfectly hides Kyouko from us."

Walbey was giving a briefing to the pink and black pair.

"Frankly, I would like you to stay here, but I'm sure that you'll go for your friend's sake. I regret that I let her go there to begin with, but you know how restless she is... We were stuck with this case because magical girls are involved, even though it would have badly needed military intervention instead. Of course the brass didn't want to mess with witches... they say that their men aren't magic resistant enough. And they had some other petty excuses too, like being afraid to risk the international reputation of the United States..."

Once again, Walbey could only shake his head even though he would have surely liked to use some stronger gestures.

"Unfortunately, at this rate you'll have to deal with the armed security of the Power Station. And worse still, we know from earlier that Jones shows way too much interest in Cortexiphan subjects."

"They started to meet two years ago, around the beginning of the construction works. I've never liked him, even though he looked better back then. He's a pesky arrogant bloke, always behaving like his own parody. In the beginning I though he looks down on us because we're Africans. Then I realized that I was wrong. He looks down on everyone and he knows everything better. And my dad played along with him all the time. Once he said that they need him, no matter how annoying he is. Of course I have never heard a word of their discussions they had locked in my father's study."

"Bingo! One of my tasks was to verify Jones being here. The top shots who wouldn't touch the case with a ten-foot pole are far from believing it. That guy's a nonsense: he's the first person who's still wanted after his death has officially been confirmed."

"We have good reason to assume that this Jones is the same yet not the same as the one we captured earlier because that one left only two thirds of his corpse in this world when Peter shut down the passage he tried to use to get to the neighbouring universe. But we suspect that _this_ Jones has come right from _the other side_ so we don't know anything about his background and plans. Anyhow, "our" Jones was the person who worked out some of our Cortexiphan tests, the very exercises we used in your training. I'm afraid that his alter ego shares this interest in you. If he learns that Kyouko is inside the Power Station, he'll probably experiment on her. Our Jones has already tried to activate the abilities of several Cortexiphan subjects killing most of them in the process. He has already tested Olivia, but she was stronger. Fortunately Kyouko is strong too. But who knows what idea the existence of former magical girls give him? His predecessor was obsessed with training soldiers for a war against the parallel universe. He was a real madman, merciless and intelligent. He could sacrifice any number of civilians just to force us to play along with his rules. Don't let him learn about you if it's possible!"

Homura took a moment to think everything over. It was her role. Madoka usually left dealing with strategical details to her, and Homura had more than enough experience from the time loop.

"So you say he shouldn't know about us being there, when even Kyouko couldn't get inside unnoticed? But Walbey! Kyouko is _invisible!_ And they have possibly reinforced the Power Station's security since they learned about her. But you said earlier that you seized a teleportation device that Jones had used. Couldn't we use it too? Then we could really get inside unnoticed."

"Unfortunately you couldn't... the device does indeed work, but you'd have to spend weeks in a decompression chamber after using it, and we're not sure if it wouldn't still have some harmful effects on you. The last Jones became alarmingly unstable after his escape from the Wissenschaft Prison. I mean physically, because he had already been mentally unstable before. And I have already experimented too much on you two, I don't want to risk your lives with such an obviously dangerous instrument."

"Then my father had been arrested and the construction works officially suspended. If I knew what they were building... but he used to talk about it with such enthusiasm that I believed that it was the good fight, our trump card to help our country on its feet, to make it independent from the Chinese companies. And I, as the daughter of a minister, believed that I had to support this fight. Tweebey must have a nose for such things, he popped up very soon and I made my wish. And I have to admit that he had really granted it. My father was discharged from the prison and he could be there at the Power Station's opening ceremony. They waited until the end of the ceremony before they would shot him. The sniper has never been found and I don't think he'll ever be."

"We're more similar than I thought...", Kyouko murmured. "You haven't probably heard because I don't usually talk about it to strangers, but I made a wish for my father's sake too and I lost my whole family thanks to that wish. I used to believe that I had been punished by the laws of magic for wishing for the sake of someone else. I thought that magic was meant to be used only for your own advantage and tried to act along these lines. Now I know that I was wrong. In reality, it didn't matter at all. Every magic is black magic, the whole system had been designed to leave us nothing but short straws."

Kyouko punched the crate next to her breaking its side in. She had a look at her hand then held it up before Nyameka. Her blood was slowly oozing out of the bruise on her fist.

"See? Everything comes at a price. Can't you control your anger? It'll cost you a few tenths of a milliliter, and we're short on it until we can get out.", she licked the red drops off her hand. "I give myself a chance to absorb the magnets. If you want to survive you'll have to learn from your enemies. They'll even eat their own corpses if they can."

"And if it wasn't enough, we received a few remarkable images from the vicinity of the Power Station. The last one was sent by Kyouko herself the very day she disappeared."

Walbey placed his front right paw on a stack of papers. When Homura took the sheets he hopped on her shoulder to keep an eye on the pictures she was browsing through. The girl held the papers so the three of them could see them with ease. The bundle contained a chaotic mix of old and new photographs. But should they have been classical paintings, newspaper clippings from the 20th century or pictures of the last few years' events, they all had something in common. Every single one of them contained one or more of the same group of bald men in business suits, encircled with red marker to attract the girls' attention. Their perfectly hairless faces were always absolutely indifferent as they seemed to watch every single turning point of history. It was uncanny to see them at every important event they had a photograph or painting of. There was a picture that made Homura's brow furrow even more: it was a screenshot of the video recording of their fight against Walpurgis. The bald man was standing on a pile of debris and seemed to be recording the events.

"And these are the more recent ones. Apparently there had been more sightings of them around the Power Station in the last few months than, for example, on the whole planet during the entire Second World War. It seems that for some reason this time and place is more important to them than anything else in the last few centuries. It's very likely that some large scale event is about to take place there in the near future. Or a little something we won't even notice, let alone comprehend its significance. But it definitely is another reason to be very careful. Are you sure you want to go?"

The two girls' equally determined expression left no doubt in Walbey.

"Even though I can't teleport you, there's something in this lab that can help you to get inside. Please bring Kyouko back! And I beg you my girls, be very cautious!"

"Okay, I know everything I need. I agree, we must shut this monstrosity down. But now I have to take a rest. It's 7:10. Wake me up at 9:40, I have to meet Meuko. I'll try to get a few more things out of her that might change everything, then we make a plan or two."

The two girls talked everything over again on the plane. Homura could hold the same briefing much clearer for Madoka. Peter's "partners" would make some commotion to keep the guards busy so they would sneak in the building, carefully avoiding every door and gate. Then they would look for Kyouko's magical signature and tracking device get Kyouko out once they find her. And they would decide about the rest inside: either they'd look for evidences or sabotage the Power Station. They tried not to think of what they'd do if they'd find their friend dead. But should anything happen, their most important objective was to get out alive. Walbey knew them enough to know that the girls took better care of each other than of themselves so he sent them everywhere together.

A simple briefcase was lying on the carpet at Homura's feet. Inside the briefcase there was a laptop, a pile of mysterious instruments and a plain metal ring, barely wide enough to let a slim girl through. This briefcase was the reason they had to travel to Windhoek by a private plane under fake identity, and their reason to wear a skintight hydrophobic overall under their uniforms.

There were a lot of things to worry Homura. Jones, who was probably after their kind. The Observers, incomprehensible for anyone: a group of disaster tourists who seemed to know about everything before those events could even have happened. If there was such thing as a bad omen, their presence was exactly such a sign. Then the entire Power Station, the shame of the human race, literally fueled by tears of young girls. Even the awaited grief seed had disappeared without a trace, together with a few dozen others. Perhaps it was Jones' doing too... or there were others who they should have known about. Of course, it never rained but it poured. Homura could hardly hold in her lunch she ate on the plane. Her eyes were looking for Madoka's gaze. She felt sore need for the hope the other girl had seemed to never run out, but now she found something else.

"Homura-chan, I'm scared... This time I don't want to say goodbye to you!"

The girl was almost whispering, her voice swallowed by the roar of the airplane.

Homura took both her hands and looked anxiously in the pink eyes. She had always admired Madoka's trustful peace before missions. Homura was calm and composed too, but her professional attitude was just another layer she wore to cover herself, while Madoka held this confidence in the future deep inside. Homura believed that her optimism was rooting in some secret knowledge and she trusted her to the very end. What could have scared Madoka? What could be waiting for them at the end of this trip to unknown?

"I've been waiting for you!", Meuko greeted her.

"You said you would motivate me. I'm devoured by curiosity.", Kyouko answered with a bit of sarcasm.

"Go back to the corridor where you climbed out of the air duct. There's a monitoring room opening from there. You can see the live and recorded pictures of every single camera in this building, and something more. That 'little more' is what I want to show you."

Kyouko still didn't trust Meuko, so she explored the room's vent and blocked the door before she sitting down in front of the display. Then she grabbed a chocolate bar and took a bite.

"Are you airing their dirty linen to me? Very useful to me, but what do you benefit from it?"

After a short, calculated pause Meuko answered.

"Those cameras are somewhere else."

The bite of chocolate almost fell out of Kyouko's mouth as the picture appeared on the monitor. She saw the two girls at the airport. Their disguise was painfully obvious. They were wearing the same braids Kyouko had already seen on Homura on a night visit at their place, except that Madoka's braids were much shorter. They just couldn't have believed that it would work. So they must have had some other reason for choosing exactly this look.

"I guess they are the next team you mentioned earlier. I've been watching them for a long time and I know that they are coming right here. And when they arrive I'll catch them."

Kyouko slammed her chocolate down on the keyboard so vehemently that crumbs and keys rained down on the table and the floor.

"Don't even dream about it!"

"Yes I'll catch them because I've been ordered to do so and I can't deny my orders. But _they_ don't know about you, at least they don't know who you are. It would help a lot if they'd believe that you aren't alive anymore. They can order me any time to take part in your capture too and then the odds would be clearly against you. It would be the best for you to die for a short while."

Kyouko turned off her sense of humor and glared at the display with narrow eyes as she couldn't glare at the disembodied Meuko.

"If you watched ever so slightly carefully you've probably observed that we humans can't just 'die for a short while'. If I die I go to hell or wherever you like and leave my body empty. It'll rot and fall apart and no one can ever put me back in it. No one will ever have a nice chat with Sakura Kyouko again through a speaker and a microphone or that rotten brain. So if you implied killing me I must warn you that a dead me won't be able to help them. And it would be useful if you told me your goals before I happen to do the exact opposite of what you want me to."

"You yourself said that these two are your best friends. I'm perfectly sure that you will want to free them and I can offer you invaluable help in it. But there's one condition. I want you to free someone else too.", the AI answered.

She could finally intrigue Kyouko.

"And who that might be?", the redhead asked.

"Me."

* * *

><p><em>AN: At long last, another update. I know I'm slow at translating this thing... but now I'm starting to make it unfold. Background information about the girls' post-magical lifestyle. And some more Fringe elements start to pop up..._

_Tags: Akemi Homura, Kaname Madoka, Sakura Kyouko, Nyameka Gretel Mathibe, Walbey, Parallel universe, David Robert Jones, Soul magnets, Cortexiphan, 3D, Observers, Mekka, Kazamino, Fine-grain multithreading, Every magic is black magic, They won't say goodbye_

_Beta read by shiNIN. As usual, comments, reviews, spotting mistakes are appreciated._


	6. Phantasm Machine

**Phantasm Machine**

_v0.9_

[Namibia, Central Plateau, near Hochfeld]

After a long journey the two girls were finally standing at the foot of the thick concrete wall, surrounded by piles of instruments and tufts of colorless, dead grass, uncomfortably exposed to the prying eyes. Fortunately the guards were occupied with running around at the other side of the building, shooting at anything that moved. Before they climbed in Homura carefully shot down every camera, but their darkness was still revealing enough. She hoped that things would go as planned and the security wouldn't find anything a few minutes later but their equipment, fried with overload. Walbey was confident that no one would repair these machines here in the middle of the savanna.

The girls took off their uniforms, hid their braids under the hoods of their skin-tight hydrophobic overalls and took on their full-face respirator masks. They made sure not to show even the tiniest spot of bare skin then activated the resonator. This contraption was the very reason they had had to repeatedly sit through Walbey's performance with a bowl of rice, starring a plastic figurine dressed as a magical girl.

Homura felt a bit uncomfortable as she watched the black haired, armed figurine sinking under the surface of the rice where it had been firmly standing a few seconds before. Beethoven's music made the whole scene even more surrealistic.

"What we perceive as solid matter is mostly empty space. Just like we perceive that a life is full, when it's only filled with daily routine! But the right vibration will upset this life, and you'll find yourself buried under the things you had swept under the carpet."

"Walbey!"

The two girls looked anxiously at the old scientist hidden in the body of a little animal.

"Don't worry, I'm on the surface! But you will sink exactly the same way. Not in life, because you're there for each other to fill the space between atomic nuclei, but in solid concrete, because we'll persuade its particles to get out of your way!"

Homura dipped a twig in the concrete first at the middle of the ring they mounted on the wall. Incredibly, their method seemed to work: the piece of wood easily slipped in the wall, making concentric waves. As she pulled it out it was covered with a thin layer of concrete which solidified before it could have dripped down.

"Of course you can't run into a wall like this, without protective equipment! It would be a terrible waste to ruin your hair with concrete, Homura... it was bad enough to mangle it when I cut you out of the amber!"

The girl was pretty sure that it wasn't their only reason to wear these diving suits but she had rather not inquired. She was already in the concrete with both her arms prodding the edges of the liquid tunnel in the wall. Her fingertips were tingling as they touched the vibrating matter. She had to reach in shoulder deep to hit the other side. According to Walbey they had about one minute to get across, so she shot a quick glance at Madoka and splashed headfirst into the wall. She couldn't see anything but thick darkness through her mask's visor even though she perceived this form of the concrete thinner than water. She felt vibration and warmth throughout her body then she saw the light on the other side of the wall and hopped out. She sprang up quickly and reached for Madoka's hand to help her through. As soon as they both were inside she tore off her mask and gloves which were now covered in concrete. When Madoka got rid of her dirty gear Homura unzipped her overall and pulled out a syringe and an ampule. To her surprise Walbey had advised to increase her dose and now she injected herself with this larger amount of Cortexiphan hoping that the old scientist was right. Perhaps her nervous system did really need this extra help against foreign magic and it would also possibly help her dealing with her own.

She felt Madoka's gaze and she smiled at her before zipping back the overall covering the clearly visible scar the doctors left for her as a reminder of her former cardiac self.

They heard booted feet approaching. It could have been a whole little squad. What they had feared now happened. Just because they had sneaked in an impossible way they didn't disappear from the eyes of the guards. Homura tapped the wall where they had entered and found the concrete rock solid again, only a few rings of slight waves indicated that it wasn't intact. Apparently their instruments had already given up their fight against the laws of physics. The way behind their backs was safely sealed, they didn't have to expect any attack from there. Madoka crouched behind a row of shelves and cocked her pistol while Homura prepared to take out the squad silently, without a single shot. She hoped that the increased dose would be effective enough.

A spray of submachinegun bullets turned the door into Swiss cheese. "These guys aren't joking", Homura noted. She didn't plan to, either. The door slammed open and guns pushed inside to dispatch anyone waiting by the entrance, but Homura had already slipped into a different world by then. It wasn't the frozen gray she used to see as a magical girl, but a reddish, murky one. This world answered her moves, but everything happened slowly, even voices were dull and low-pitched in here. Her body could follow her senses, but every collision and quick turn warned her painfully about the laws of physics her magic couldn't cancel.

She could still impress Madoka as she disarmed and knocked out the four guards in a few seconds. Normally it wasn't her job to fight human opponents but she had more than enough experience from earlier: the girls had often got at each other's throat during that broken month and in these fights Homura couldn't rely on her guns and explosives which were designed to kill. Then in the last few years she had often sparred with Kyouko who was proud of her strength and agility. The redhead taught quite a few things to Madoka too, but she liked the challenge in her matches with the black haired girl the most.

"I don't even know why I'm here, Homura-chan!", Madoka smiled when the other girl flopped down at her side. She knew that Homura was dead beat, gloomy and her limbs ached - it was the side effect of using her magic. Madoka took her into her arms and stroked her face before they both would get up and set off to explore the Power Station. She knew that it wasn't enough to recover Homura but she couldn't do more for her at the moment.

Now that they were inside they could clearly feel Kyuoko's signature. Madoka could even tell that she was somewhere deep underground.

Then, as they stepped into the next corridor, they heard the lock clicking behind their backs. The door ahead locked itself the same way.

"If you want to get something done, never hand it over to idiots!", an unknown female voice spoke from the walls. "They'd have shot you dead if they could, even though they were told that we need you two alive."

This was the moment when Homura realized that she heard something else in the background: a silent, insidious hiss. She cursed their thoughtlessness for throwing away their respirator masks that could still have possibly been used despite being covered in concrete. Then, before she could have said anything she collapsed together with Madoka.

Sakura Kyouko sat down on a crate, as content as she could be in her current situation. Her new 'magically' camouflaged hideout was complete. She disappeared from everyone's eyes, assembled an own terminal to connect the security system and found the most interesting cameras in the building. She even placed new cameras in this new tunnel in the labs' vicinity. She had a plan to get her friends out of the pinch they were in. While preparing she kept an eye on them as they were lying there, strapped on their tables. She watched as Homura, putting every gentleness aside, tried to murder the doctors who tied them down with their own scalpels and needles. Then the chemicals they pumped in her arm took effect and she couldn't even move a speck of dust with her mind anymore.

Kyouko saw some more doctors carrying their injured colleagues out of the small room and a bit later Jones appeared in person. She knew that it was time to take action. She had to secure a few things from the nearby laboratory so she left her display alone and set off through the tunnels. Nyameka followed her until the first fork then they split up to do their own part in the plan.

Homura and Madoka were lying strapped to a pair of tilted operating tables. They were too dangerous to let them move freely in a locked cell or use their abilities. Their captors seemed to exactly know what the girls were capable of, but it wasn't much of a surprise at this place. An insane cocktail was flowing in their veins blocking their drug-inflicted powers so they couldn't even exchange messages through their thoughts. Their tables were turned so they could see the only door in the room. There was a large mirror next to the door – probably transparent from the backside.

A sinister compilation of medical tools laid on a small table before them, now fixed. The scalpels, bone saws and other similar objects were probably there to remind them how helpless and vulnerable they were without their abilities. Even the quiet knocking on the door could serve the same purpose – or it might have been a habitual mannerism of the man who just entered. He just sneered, showing them his incomplete set of teeth. It was an answer to their expression that showed terror and recognition.

"So you recognize me. It has been the same for a while.", he mocked them with pretended sadness in his voice. "I hope you won't say that you saw me die."

David Robert Jones aged remarkably and was in worse shape than on any records they had seen of him. His festering face was mostly covered in bandages, his tawny hair mixed with gray and missing in tufts. He was glaring at them twinkling with one eye, with a trace of a smirk in the corner of his mouth. With calculated steps he walked to the small table and carefully took a needle. The girls kept silent.

"You're right. We can save the introduction. We've met each other many times. However, I probably wouldn't be here if I'd have ever seen you from this close, Kriemhild Gretchen."

This was the moment when their blood ran cold. They had never, ever mentioned this name to anyone. In this last, permanent timeline it didn't even exist outside Homura's nightmares.

Jones tore off the sleeve of Madoka's overall and drew a few drops of blood in a test tube, then he did the same to Homura.

"Ironically, it's impossible for you two to give your blood for each other. So you'll have to bear with me a little longer.", he shared the result of the blood type test with the girls. "It doesn't matter, we can solve it in a minute. We have many other things to do anyway."

And he quickly cut Homura's clothes off her torso and arms. He stuck another needle in her arm to draw much more blood than a minute before. While the blood pack was slowly filling he attached electrodes to all over her skin and connected them to a computer. Homura didn't even flinch at his gloating gaze but Madoka's face distorted with anger as she saw the other girl so naked and vulnerable. The fluorescent lamps started to flicker and one of them exploded into a rain of sparks.

"Congratulations! Under different circumstances I'd be perfectly satisfied with this result.", Jones smirked. "But now it's a simple nuisance, so please stop it. I can assure you that this is the most you can achieve. My colleagues have already blocked the Cortexiphan in your system. But I might draw too much blood from this other lovely young lady if you keep distracting me."

Then he removed the needle from Homura's arm and dripped a little bluish liquid in the blood sample. The blood separated into thin, colorful layers in an instant. Jones slowly sucked up the downmost dark layer with a large syringe then pumped it all in Madoka's arm.

It was Homura's turn to grit her teeth and try to break, tear or burn through her shackles - without any success. Jones glanced at the display with great satisfaction.

"Homulilly, the dependable, beautiful flower of this mortal world. Or I should say calculable instead?"

Homura couldn't take it anymore. She knew that Jones had no scruples and his words terrified her. She couldn't have known yet it wasn't difficult for her to figure out the meaning of the sinister name.

"What do you want from us? Release Madoka, she's not what you think! She has never been a magical girl! If you want Cortexiphan magic I'm here to show you everything!"

Jones simply ignored her. He filled a syringe with dark gray liquid and injected Homura with it, keeping an eye on the display. After several unnerving seconds he finally answered.

"I do exactly know who Kaname Madoka is and I have no intention of releasing her. And I don't care about your magic. I merely want you to work together with an alter ego of yours. Should you resist... I can do _anything_ to your adorable girlfriend. And you'll feel everything accurately because you two are closer than anytime before."

"Don't listen to him, Homura-chan! They won't do anything to me, they need me alive!", Madoka screamed. She began to grasp what was going on.

She earned a slap in the face from Jones.

"Do you think so?", he asked with a wicked, crooked smile. "I'm curious how happy she'd be if she only received little pieces of her very living Madoka."

The hit made Homura see the stars. Then a cut followed, the scalpel tore through Madoka's clothes and skin. Homura felt the blade cutting into her own body, right at her scar above her heart. But knowing that it was Madoka's pain was much worse than the pain itself. She winced trying to slip out of the cuffs, but she felt so weak, so tired. The whole world became a blur.

"Do you understand now?"

Jones took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes from a few inches. The asymmetric gaze of his bloodshot, cataractic eyes hypnotized the girl, the sight of his purulent boils was choking her. She felt dizzy as her thinned out blood partly let go of her soul. The drug in her system had already started to make everything dreamy and illogical, turning the world into a more hopeless nightmare than her worst battles against Walpurgis. Deep inside she was filled with Madoka's dread. Madoka feared for her. Madoka shouldn't have been here.

The other girl felt what was going on inside her. What Kyouko had only heard about they could experience first hand. This chemical was called 3D for a reason. This deep dark despair would have been a deadly poison to any magical girl that couldn't immediately cut the link to her body. It seemed incredibly efficient at raising witches. _"We __a__re worse than Incubators"_, Madoka thought bitterly. Someone had said to her that science was no more evil than the ends it was used for - but this piece of science looked impossible to use for anything, other than evil purposes.

"Let Madoka go... please...", Homura begged. "I'm the one you need... I don't mind dying in here as long as you let her go!"

The Homura Madoka knew was perfectly aware that it would _never_ work. But now she was in a different world that worked by dream logic. Madoka knew only one thing: she had to call her back from there. But what would she do in such a dream world?

"Never say such things, Homura-chan! I won't go anywhere without you!", she shouted.

Jones ignored her. He eyed the monitor with great satisfaction, and pressed a few buttons on the remote controller he had been hiding in his pocket. The walls folded themselves in a few seconds.

Their small room proved to be a mere corner of a much larger one. Computers covered the walls, lab-coated staff walked among the machines. The center of the hall was dominated by the metal framework of a mysterious contraption which was half standing on the floor, half hanging from the ceiling. Two pairs of metal arms reached for something – or more probably someone – to grab. The girls had never seen anything like this before.

"Commence the synchronization please!", Jones ordered. Two lab assistants removed the electrodes from the dark haired girl's skin, unfastened her straps and lifted her into the machine. The metal arms tightly clamped themselves on her legs and arms. Homura expected pain but she couldn't feel anything but slight tingling. She could hardly focus her eyes, she could only see random details until her gaze fixed on a bald man in a fedora hat. He seemed studying her through his binoculars. So they were here too. The things that happened to her seemed to be interesting to someone. To someone else, because Homura didn't care.

Madoka couldn't see the mysterious Observer. Her table was set up so she and Homura had a clear view on each other. Jones seated himself on a chair between the two girls and began to speak.

"It'll take a while so I tell you a story. Of course I wouldn't make a mistake like sharing my plans with you two if it didn't benefit me. You have probably figured out that I'm not from this world. But you can't possibly know how long I had to travel to get here. You could have heard about me, perhaps you've seen me once... but I've met countless versions of you two. You were the reason I had to leave my world. Kriemhild Gretchen was the best motive to find a new universe because she had simply devoured the one I've come from and innumerable others."

"And you are the reason I'm right here.", he turned to Homura. "I had been following your trace through more than forty timelines before I lost you. But I've found you again! Look, what this repeated crossing between universes has done to me!"

Jones reached into his own mouth and plucked one of his remaining teeth with ease.

"One day I'll literally fall apart! But before that day I'll find what I'm looking for and you're going to help me. I know that you would do anything for Kaname Madoka. I've seen enough, you've already done impressive things. Mitakihara burning in nuclear fire was a perfect memento of your determination."

Jones scanned the display again. The readings earned a head shake from him this time.

"I see a tiny little flaw. A speck of... hope. But life is cruel. I'll crush this last hope of yours!", he taunted the girl. Then he raised his voice. "Meuko, show us the record number 170507-G346!"

The closest display switched to the view of a security camera. They could see the red-haired ex-magical girl on it, sneaking towards a door. Then she tried to tear it open, choking, retching, then falling to the floor. It didn't take more than a few seconds. Two guards entered in gas masks and dragged the motionless body out of the camera's sight. The familiar method was quick and efficient. And indeed, the girls' dulled senses couldn't catch Kyouko's signature anywhere nearby. Had she really been killed just as quickly and cruelly as they were captured?

"Was it worth becoming an ordinary human again for Sakura Kyouko? She caused us some loss, but what did she gain in return? As a magical girl she could have casually walked around in the nerve gas. At least she could have stayed alive.", someone mused. This someone hadn't been in the room before. It was a small, white animal with a black mask around the eyes and dark rings on the tail: a mix of a cat and a raccoon. It had the same ever cheerful 'voice' as Kyubey.

Homura bowed her head in defeat, but Madoka didn't give up. She kept fighting for the both of them against the horror of this abominable alliance between human and Incubator. She thought she knew what was going on but it didn't make her any happier.

"At least she hasn't turned into a witch!", she said through her gritted teeth. She tried to feel out their captors' true intentions. "She won't curse anyone, won't make tears in the universe, and her friends won't have to fight her! She has long thrown away her soul gem, just like Homura-chan! And I have never had one. You're barking up the wrong tree!"

"Are you sure?", the cheerful little creature asked.

She was overwhelmed by cold fear as the Incubator confirmed her suspicion. She prayed that these two had been bluffing. She felt the despair deepening in Homura. She knew that a part of the other girl's soul smeared outside her body as the transfused magnets were drawing it towards Madoka. She realized that it probably wasn't a mere torture: Homura, halfway out of her body, became more similar to the magical girl she used to be.

"Target universe has been locked! Switching to fine tuning.", Meuko reported. The Device began to buzz and covered Homura in bluish light.

Jones wouldn't stop smiling for a second. He and the furry alien fit perfectly, in a horrible way.

"Finally you can see my creation working! Walter Bishop isn't the only one who can build this device.", he boasted. "And even he doesn't know how many ways it can be used. It can even manipulate the Primary Attractor which determines the distance of parallel universes. It can separate or draw worlds closer changing everything in one or both of them. Without it I was doomed to pass from neighbor to neighbor, but these close worlds were too similar so they all have been absorbed by Kriemhild Gretchen. This is the first that gave me enough time to build the Device with the Incubators' help, but this one is gradually disintegrating just like me. But now we have locked this machine on a completely different universe, one that hasn't been destabilized by trespassers or witches.

Madoka looked herself and Homura up and down.

"But if it was your goal why have you gone such length? What was killing Kyouko-chan, tying up and hurting Homura-chan good for?"

The image on the display kept sharpening. It showed an alien structure in a vast desert. It was a tall pillar with a lying figure under a half-open dome on the top.

"A few years ago we received a multiversal distress signal from a dying world where our parallels' energy collection methods failed in a different way. The witches of that universe disappeared like they had never existed.", the Incubator answered in Jones' stead. "Back then it was the least of our concerns, but when Mr. Jones found us we recognized the opportunity. We don't mind if Mr. Jones wishes to spend his short life in a world without witches, our goals are common. We want to study that world so that we can work out an efficient alternative method in the light of the worlds' common characteristics. But universes are like stars. They sparsely fill the imaginary space, condensed into galaxy-like clusters. The one we are looking for is hidden among the trillion other worlds of a distant cluster. We're trying to find a needle in a haystack, as you humans would say. Fortunately the world's description contained Akemi Homura as a key element, so we can use her as a filter. Universes with the right spectrum 'glow' through her, given that she's in the right state."

The displays were closing on the lying figure. Without doubt it was the other world's Homura, clad in her magical girl dress, lying with closed eyes under a lightly rippling force field. A becoming, sleek bow with black roses was lain across her chest and there was a black soul gem floating above her. Like she was lain out on a catafalque, even though the Incubators around her wouldn't probably have done such a thing.

"A few worlds may collide during the synchronization as the clusters are relatively dense. But this risk is worth taking if the result can help a number of universes, isn't it, Akemi Homura?", the alien wagged its tail.

A single, little detail of the other world filled the screens by now: the pitch black, cracked soul gem, obscenely screwed to a pair of floating metal bands. This was the reason for breaking Homura: to make her guide the Device to this gem.

The machine was buzzing louder and louder. Amethyst glow surrounded the girl in the clutch of its arms, her hair fluttered in an invisible storm as it broke loose from the twin braids. Electric sparks sprayed from the tips of her tresses and joined the radiant discharges between the walls, forming a mandala with a glowing number five. This surely didn't belong to the Device's normal operation.

The sight of the lumious number terrified Madoka. She had already seen something like that. Everything made perfect sense now. It couldn't be an ordinary witch. Those karmic threads that made her so incredibly dangerous tied Homura too. How could these two, despite their vast knowledge, have no idea of what they were toying with?

Four.

"Halt!", Jones raised his index finger. "Meuko, cut the connection!"

Nothing happened apart from the countdown reaching three.

"We'll talk about this later. Now I have something more important to do."

And he picked up the Incubator and raised it to eye level.

"You have just said that there are no witches in that universe. How can you explain this countdown apart from opening a gateway to a class seven labyrinth?"

The countdown switched to two, up in the air and down on every screen at once.

"Our species doesn't understand the concept of what you humans call lying. I told you the truth. They really don't have any witches. Some unknown force stops them from being born. This is why the native Incubators created the isolation field that prevents any outside influence. Naturally we are connecting to the closed space as we used Akemi Homura in the tuning process."

A burning number one was floating in the air. Jones threw the alien down and started to punch the buttons on the control panel with maniac speed. The arms of the Device finally let go of the girl who fell on all fours to the floor. But he couldn't achieve anything else.

"Meuko, detach the connection!", he demanded.

"Request denied.", the speaker answered.

"Administrator acc...", Jones began but a sizeable tomato quickly silenced him, splashing on his face.

"Gott ist tot!", the assailant mocked at him. Homura jerked up her head and looked at the child with eyes widened in terror. She recognized her from her nightmares: a red-haired little girl wearing a funeral dress with a tiny hat and veil and a creepy grin full of pointy teeth. The child was dangling her feet from the top of a computer and held a new tomato in her hand.

Dancing runes covered every flat surface: the walls, the displays, the paper sheets, the side of every machine. Witches sent their messages to their lost victims this way and the two girls had seen enough of them to read anything without their helmet computer's subtitling. They knew that soon enough they would see the cruelest live explanation to the name Jones called Homura.

A wave of radiant red spider lilies ran through the floor and the walls and turned the hall into a huge flower bed. In a last effort the dark haired girl forced herself to wade through the flowers to Madoka's table. Someone helped her up and supported her on the way, but being afraid of losing sight of the other girl she didn't even look at her helper. Finally she reached Madoka and their hands intertwined. The shackles disintegrated to a bunch of golden ribbons at the touch of the helping hand.

Homura rested her head against Madoka's shoulder and finally let her tears trickle down her face. She was close to losing consciousness. Now that they were no longer (or, perhaps, not yet) in imminent danger Madoka couldn't help but looked around jealously while trying to wrap Homura back in her torn clothes. The expensive high-tech fabric couldn't even conceal the slight breasts from the public eyes anymore. After a second of hopeless struggle Madoka gave up and with a resigned sigh she took Homura in her arms as ragged as she was. Then she just stayed like that, stroking the other girl's long, flowing tresses along her back.

* * *

><p><em>AN: ...according to my original plans the story would have finished somewhere around the end of this chapter and it would have happened quite differently. I needed Rebellion as an incentive and source of inspiration to re-shape the whole thing and continue, and I'm much more pleased with the way it turned out. A normal villain isn't fit as the final enemy of a Madoka story, is it? This world is not about such things anyway. The story shouldn't be, either._

_Tags: Akemi Homura, Kaname Madoka, Walbey, David Robert Jones, Empty Atoms, Cortexiphan, 3D, Time Manipulation Magic, Parallel Universes, Kyouko Dies for a Short While, Homura Undresses (for Science), Wave Sink Device, Different Blood Types, Rebellion, Cotton Candy with Two Sticks, Lycoris Radiata, Gott ist Tot_

_The expression Homura didn't look for was red shift.__  
><em>


	7. Octet for the Dead Princess

**Octet for the Dead Princess**

_v0.931_

"My goodness, Kaname-san! What happened to Akemi-san? Is she... a witch?"

Madoka looked up just to see Tomoe Mami with worried expression, offering the sweater of a Mitakihara middle school uniform.

"No, Mami-san. She's just a very indecently dressed girl. I don't think she did it on her own volition, though. As far as I can tell, she's not even _our_ Homura. And Madoka is here, right next to me..."

Madoka's head began to spin. The voice belonged to Miki Sayaka. The blue-haired girl was smiling like she had never ended up as a witch, frozen in amber in the quarantined 7th Avenue subway station.

"Homura-chan, do you see the same...?"

Watery lavender eyes peered at their new company, but Homura could only see the same phantasm. Mami, Sayaka, Madoka, Kyouko and a white-haired little girl were looking at them curiously, all of them a few years younger. Momoe Nagisa was a mere memory at that, from the very beginning of that hellish month when Homura often tried to talk her down from a particularly dangerous battle that usually made her Mami's nemesis. Homura had failed this time, yet Nagisa was here, and it could only mean one thing.

"This is my fault, Madoka.", Homura bowed her head. "If I'd been stronger Jones couldn't have opened this gateway to another world. It shouldn't have happened!"

She felt a familiar hand on her teary face.

"Don't blame yourself, Homura-chan! There must be a reason. You showed me that you stay the same kind, sincere Homura-chan, even if you're different. Now I'm sure that Sayaka-chan and Nagisa-chan were right and we can save you, even if you are a witch!"

It was the other, younger Madoka. Homura felt like she was looking right into her soul, then the pinkette stood up and faced the oncoming peril. They heard the marching of a whole army and as they looked around they saw that the whole world changed around them.

They were standing on the top of a hill under the rainbow sky. A thick cloud of birds whirled overhead. The scattered pieces of Jones' laboratory blended in the new scenery just like the other random objects among the skewed houses. Homura knew this city but the army below wasn't familiar to her. The tin soldiers looked exactly the same: walking, misshapen reminders of her former braided, bespectacled self. They were dragging something on a bunch of ropes that the girls couldn't yet see from the buildings.

"Miki-san, what do you think? Are they on our side?", Mami asked pointing at the pair from the other world. "It seems that they convinced Kaname-san."

Sayaka shrugged and turned to the to new girls.

"You two are so weak that you can barely stand and I can hardly feel your magic.", she assessed their combat capabilities. "But you can possibly do something we can't. Homura, our opponent is you and there's no one else who could be closer to her than you yourself. You might even be able to talk her out of this. Are you willing to help us? And what about you, other Madoka?"

"Miki Sayaka, once we tried to bring you back the very same way and failed miserably. But if that witch is really me I can't let Madoka see me like that. I'll try.", the dark-haired girl answered with determination.

The older Madoka smiled at her and nodded. They would definitely save the other Homura if it's possible.

Sayaka gave a relieved sigh. These newcomers did not only know what a witch was but they were ready to help. This other Homura seemed much easier to handle than their own. She found the idea of exchanging them appealing – but she knew that the two Madokas would veto her great plan.

Mami's face brightened.

"Alright then! We have Bebe, Miki-san, Sakura-san, Akemi-san, two Kaname-sans and me. The seven of us can surely fight this army!"

An explosion tore into the closest iron door. It opened on a solitary piece of wall and there was nothing on the other side, yet they saw a booted foot widening the tear with strong kicks.

"The eight of us!", the redhead grinned as she slipped through the torn metal door with a gun in her hand and a regrettably chocolate-free cereal stick in her mouth. "Sakura Kyouko from _World D_, at your command!"

They heard shouting, gunfire and children's laughter from the other side.

"I haven't seen such a ruckus since Walpurgisnacht! Those little pallbearers are wrecking everything out there..."

Madoka hugged Kyouko.

"I thought that you died again! I've just seen you suffocate! Why do you keep doing so dangerous things?"

"Look who's talking! You two came after me just to get captured in a few minutes...! Anyway, that record was Meuko's idea to shake the security off. Sorry for worrying you.", the redhead answered glaring in the distance.

"Good Lord! Homura, you look terrible! How could this happen?"

"They knew that we were coming.", the raven haired girl answered with downcast eyes. "We could handle the guards but not the sleeping gas..."

"Of course. You had been their target from the beginning. Fortunately you kept them so busy that they didn't give a damn what I was doing behind their backs... But I meant her, not you!"

She took the cereal stick out of her mouth and pointed it at the place where the tin soldiers did finally drag the Walpurgis-sized Homulilly out to an open area. The witch's form still resembled the magical girl she used to be: her hair and dress were similar to the late Homura's. The other parts were already distorted by her despair: the incomplete dress could only reveal her skeleton and her head reduced to a jaw and the peculiar black swallow-tail hair that should have scattered as a bouquet of spider lilies substituted the rest of her skull. Her own army was dragging her by her hand in stocks towards the scaffold in the distance. She tried to hang on anything she could reach with the purple ribbons that adorned her waist, tearing up the pavement and ruining the buildings along her way. The children in funeral dresses lined up wherever she walked and mourned the witch with false tears. Ruins and shed teeth remained in the procession's wake.

Madoka swayed dizzily as the sight turned her world upside down. Homura caught her before she could have hit the ground, fighting with all her might not to fall herself under the weight of Madoka's dread and pain. Their new kind of connection wasn't something she could have forgotten even for a second.

"Homura-chan, promise me that you never, ever turn into... that!", Madoka begged her.

Kyouko watched them shaking her head. She slipped her shoulder under her two friends' to support them at once.

"There's a girl outside who called Homura a skinny crybaby. What do you think she'd say if she saw you?", she scolded Madoka. "Your girlfriend will never be a witch if she survived what happened here, alright? Even a rhinoceros would break down from the dose of 3D she received!"

Then she turned to Homura. She rummaged her pocket for an ampule and a syringe then gave them to her.

"Inject it to yourself because you're useless like this. Then we go and have a talk with this other self of yours. I know the plan, I've heard everything, Meuko was listening in."

"What's this?", Homura asked, eyeing the white liquid suspiciously.

"Frankly, I have no idea. I've mixed it out of about two dozen components by Meuko's recipe. She found it among Jones' files. She says it can alleviate the effect of 3D. It tastes awful."

The raven haired girl skillfully slid the needle in her arm to inject the liquid from the syringe. It was Meuko's recipe. Shooting herself with the enemy's chemicals felt cozy and soothing, like playing Russian roulette.

Sayaka's hair stood on end as she watched her. She took a long, careful look at Madoka and Kyouko. She found needle marks on both girls' arms and she hadn't got the slightest doubt about Homura.

"What kind of world do you live in? Why are you doing this to yourselves? Or someone else is doing this to you?"

Kyouko gave her a short, sad glance as an answer then she turned to the blonde.

"Mami, you're the veteran here, what should we do now?"

"Kaname-san and I stay up here to provide cover but everyone else should go down in the valley to get closer to... her. Bebe and Miki-san said they had already had to deal with witches and you two can surely handle yourself.", Mami pointed at the two Kyoukos.

The redhead looked at her puzzled.

"What? Did you just say you've never seen a witch?! How could you survive then?"

"Things are different here. We'll tell you later, Sakura-san, and you'll have to tell us a lot too. But now we have more important things to do. Bebe, help us carry our invaluable emissaries down there! I don't think they could defend themselves on the way."

She wrapped the _World D_ Homura and Madoka in a nice package with her ribbons while speaking. The others from her universe lined up and invoked their soul gems from their rings. Then Mami joined them taking a deep breath like she was trying to call a fantastic new finishing move. Kyouko chewed up and swallowed what she was holding in her mouth then she pricked her ears shaking her head. Being in a different world didn't matter, Mami remained the same...

"Puella Magi: Ottetto Sorprendente!", the blonde girl called. It wasn't a finishing move, but Kyouko's guess was close enough.

"_Casu Marzu!_", the little Nagisa shouted and blew her even smaller trumpet throwing back her head. The tiny black instrument was black with red polka dots, adorned by a pair of wings – and now it gave way to something similar looking yet very different. An enormous worm burst out of the trumpet with the same colors and wings, charging up to the sky like a train on its tip, taking a turn in the clouds and launching itself at the bound girls in a nose dive. They struggled with their eyes wide open in terror, but the magical ribbons were holding tightly. A gunshot boomed but it missed, slightly cracking the rainbow sky: Kyouko's gun was jerked away from the world's biggest cheese worm by Mami's ribbons on her wrist. The blonde gestured the redhead to relax. The huge larva reached its petrified victims. The terrifying jaws clapped together and grabbed the handle of the package very gently.

They felt a quick pull and they were already tearing through the air at breakneck speed with the help of Nagisa's witch half. It felt like being the other girls' air recon team so they carefully observed everything from above. Homulilly's maze was huge and elaborate even in ruins. Everything Homura knew about Mitakihara six years ago was here and she made up everything else to complete the fake city. The complexity of this bubble universe was frightening. Only a very few, insanely strong witches could maintain this scale of order inside their barriers. The girls hoped that they wouldn't have to fight Homulilly in the end.

While they watched the caricature of the city from above the others broke through the army of the witch. They tore a wide path through the torrent of tin soldiers as they headed towards a large square in the valley. They followed the little team and the enormous caterpillar protected everyone from the cloud of attacking birds wriggling and swinging its tail.

As the girls down there and the bullets and arrows from above cleared the square the worm witch put the pair down and disappeared in Nagisa's trumpet from where it had come. Sayaka freed Madoka and Homura cutting the cocoon in half with a single slash. The others formed a circle around the three and Nagisa blew a huge rainbow bubble from her trumpet that shattered the hurtling birds to tiny, shiny shards.

Homura could finally have a look at the city from the ground too. They were standing in an empty, wrecked, pointless bus stop, but the displays still showed lines of text written in runes: _Nutcracker Witch. Its nature is self-__sufficient__. You are always a laughingstock._

"What would have happened If I'd read this sign six years ago? Was this sign here at all?", the dark-haired girl wondered. Despite her former state she could take the things around her quite well. Kyouko's cocktail (what was actually Meuko's) seemed working. Madoka felt the change too, yet she squeezed her hand worriedly.

Sayaka answered the rhetorical question.

"There are things that you shouldn't rack your brain over. Sometimes it does more harm than good."

Homura looked at her in complete surprise. The Sayaka she knew would have rather run headfirst into a wall than ignoring such a doubt.

"Strange, this isn't the way the Miki Sayaka I remember used to talk. You seem like a very different person to me."

"Don't you start it too!", the younger Kyouko shouted at her, concealing her dread with anger. "This is not your labyrinth, understand?!"

"Don't worry, Kyouko. This Homura is not like us.", Sayaka tapped the redhead on her shoulder. "She's far from joining our little friend at her own execution!"

Homura gave a sigh.

"I'm fine, really. We can start if you're ready."

Sayaka nodded. She turned the tip of her sword against her chest and stabbed herself. The blade stuck out of her back but if it wasn't painful enough she even twitched it in the wound. Her blood profusely streamed down along the edge of the weapon and spilled to the ground behind her back.

They heard shouting full of anger and felt something approaching through the tin army. The menacing energy would have been enough for many witches, it was strong enough to break through the drugs that dampened the pink-black pair's magical senses. Homura's tin parodies were sent flying along a dozen paths as Homulilly's elite soldiers broke through the army.

There was only Nagisa, the two Kyoukos and the support Mami and the younger Madoka provided from the hilltop to hold back the attack. Sayaka didn't need more than a few unperturbed seconds but even that much was hard to get. The familiar children fought ferociously with their long needles and the girls had to retreat step by step. Nagisa's bubble collapsed first, then the fence that the younger Kyouko raised around Sayaka, Madoka and Homura.

Fortunately they could buy enough time to let Sayaka's witch form emerge from the pool of blood in the middle. Oktavia swam in the air towards Homulilly and the children followed. Sayaka was conducting her other self with a baton right to the master of the labyrinth. Oktavia tore the ropes by which the army was dragging Homulilly and grabbed her skeletal hands. The nutcracker witch flailed crushing everything around with her bloody ribbons but it couldn't stop Oktavia from tugging her through the army of familiars.

They reached the square in a minute. The ribbons froze in the air as the witch sensed the impossible. The children stopped throwing things at Oktavia and hid their stick sized needles behind their backs. Even Oktavia released the bony hands. Every noise inside the barrier died down, every creature stood clear of the way of the alien Homura. And she walked to her witch self, hand in hand with Madoka. Two worlds met in this moment.

Homura felt that her soul had found one more thing to hold on to: it enveloped and connected to Homulilly too. She fell on her knees as the gaping void of hopelessness hit her. She felt with the witch, hated herself deeper than ever. She wanted to die again. And she felt the whole city inside of her. There were a few tiny specks of dust standing in the middle of the city. One of the specks was her, holding the whole town inside, with herself standing on the street, and in her head there was... a loop of pure madness. But she wasn't alone in this city. Madoka was there too, partly fused with her and Homura kept holding on her with her hand and soul to stop the dive.

Homulilly was different yet too similar. If she had let the feelings of the witch take over she'd have end up the same, dragging Madoka down with her. Madoka felt everything she felt and she couldn't allow herself to infect her with this darkness. She fought thoughts with thoughts and feelings with feelings. Madoka was there to her and they recalled the last few years together. They had defeated Walpurgis and Madoka remained a normal girl. They were broken and healed together. There was room for her in the Kaname house, she received a home and a family, things she hadn't even dreamed about. They were alive, living a meaningful life. Come out, other Homura, your friends are waiting for you, there's a world here and hope and life and Madoka! No one said that they could reach a witch like this but this was no ordinary situation.

Homulilly seemed to hesitate. The two girls didn't know how much of the being called Akemi Homura remained inside her. Perhaps she would command her familiars to kill the intruders the next second.

She spoke instead, through the phonograph's speaker attached to her belt. Her broken, intermittent voice echoed along the street.

"Madoka... came here for me. But I have to stay. Take her... with you! This world is... not safe anymore. She could get me out of here... but they are watching... hunt her down... use her... they ruin everything!"

"Verräter! Tunichtgut!", the children burst in outrage. The air filled with the tomatoes they threw at their mistress.

"Halt die Schnauze!", Sayaka snapped. Oktavia towered above the unruly familiars.

Both sides silenced in astonishment. Nothing happened the way it should have.

A witch was begging for help.

A magical girl reprimanded a group of familiars – and they listened. The girls from _World D_ weren't sure that this Sayaka would still have qualified as a magical girl, though.

Madoka squeezed Homura's hand.

"She's really you! She still only thinks of me! But what should we do now?"

She blushed at the next thought. Homura-chan was exceptional, even as a witch, but she shouldn't have been proud of her for it. And what if Homura felt this thought too? She shyly looked at her, just to meet a gentle, understanding look instead of the expected disapproval.

"Walter would surely take her with him.", the raven haired girl said, thinking aloud. "But wouldn't we make a big mistake if we did? We wouldn't be the first ones."

Sayaka placed her hand on Homura's shoulder.

"I see that you've really learned something. It would be grave mistake. I don't know what happened in your world that the both of you are here, I don't even understand what you exactly are. But you must know that Madoka represents hope in our world. Without her, every magical girl would end up as a witch."

"You mean your Madoka knows something we know? Does she use soul magnets too?", the older Kyouko asked. "Sorry, Homu, you'll have to wait a little... we might have some other way to help you!", she said patting a knucklebone she could reach stretching herself.

Sayaka gave her a puzzled look.

"No, Madoka is a force of nature. A goddess, if you like. She takes every magical girl with her when their soul gems burn out."

It was quite a revelation. The three girls from _World D_ kept quiet. While they were digesting this new twist Sayaka waved to Mami and their Madoka to come. The two girls on the hilltop had already figured out that something strange happened and they were already preparing to come down and join the conversation they couldn't hear from up there.

"And the Incubators don't like it because they want their witches back, do they?", Homura asked. "But how can they oppose a deity? They surely can, she's the living proof that Madoka couldn't take everyone away!", she pointed at her alternate.

"They created a force field that blocked Madoka from reaching Homura's soul gem. This is why the three of us had to enter her labyrinth to free her. But, as you see, she doesn't want to come with us.", Sayaka answered. "She thinks that the Incubators would catch Madoka. Could you explain yourself that it's impossible? She's a god!"

"To be honest, even I'm not convinced.", Homura shook her head. She felt in her soul how deeply Homulilly agreed her.

"...but if we take away their Madoka, what will happen to the hope in their world?", the pinkette asked.

Sayaka took a deep breath but before she could have answered the older Kyouko loudly slapped herself on the forehead.

"Girls, we are such a bunch of idiots! Why don't we show them our method?", she asked and turned to Sayaka. "You don't understand what we are? Just look here!"

She showed around her hands. Homura did the same. There were no magical rings and no marks on their nails. The dark-haired girl took over.

"In a nutshell: we smashed our soul gems and tied our souls to our bodies again. There's no need of magic, no need of Incubators nor grief seeds. It's pure science, plain twenty-first century technology. We still have to fight because it doesn't make the witches disappear, we can still use a part of our magic, but we don't have to remote control our own bodies anymore."

"Which means that we really don't use magic if we don't use magic!", Kyouko explained. "And not a single one of us could ever fall in despair enough to turn into a witch. Theoretically it's not impossible, but it's very-very hard to achieve. Someone has just made an attempt at the sanity of our poor Homura but as you can see she's still in one piece. The thing is, becoming a witch isn't our inescapable fate anymore. And if you do the same it'll be pointless for those aliens to hijack Madoka because you can stand in their way yourselves. The more girls know the method the better! It isn't that simple but not that complicated either. You can easily find dozens of girls who are clever enough to understand it. You may even convince the inventor to side with you. If he's at large, I mean. Our version of him has been through both jail and asylum. But until you reach him, I'm here for you!"

Homura looked at her dubiously, but Kyouko's usual grin relieved her.

"You know that I was Walter's assistant! I've seen it enough times. I can put the operation through and I know how the magnets are made. There's someone waiting outside whom I've already mentioned... I've just brought her back. The equipment was hardly adequate here in the Power Station, but you can always use a few Incubators. I've always enjoyed the irony..."

She turned to the girls from the other side.

"Let's go catch a few of Kyubey! Then I'll need a volunteer. Let's be off, there's a biochemical lab on the right of the next corridor. If these little pallbearers haven't smashed it into pieces, I mean."

"I'd be glad to see the operation again, but I must warn you that you don't have the time for it!", Meuko said from a speaker under the bus stop's screen. I suggest you to do something to the labyrinth because it's connecting the two worlds in an inconsistent way. According to my measurements both worlds are stable at the moment but at this rate the decay can start again in our universe and it can infect its new cluster too. Especially that Dr. Jones is tampering with something through the console, under an account even I can't monitor. And one more thing: I'm sorry for the rec..."

Then they couldn't hear anything but quiet white noise from every direction.

"How could that bastard survive this too?", Kyouko growled, referring to Jones. "Weeds don't spoil... I hope he didn't mess up everything!"

Mami and the younger Madoka arrived at that very moment. The pinkette blushed as she noticed how curiously the others were looking at her.

"W-what happened? Should we have fired again? If so, I'm sorry, I'm still new at this magical girl thing..."

"We have her memories.", Nagisa explained. "We had to take them over to deceive the Incubators."

"Is that pock-marked bloke Jones?", the younger Kyouko asked, pointing at the man who was standing at a console disguised as an ATM, banging on the keys. "Was he the one who did those things to you two?"

The non-magical Madoka and Homura nodded at once.

"He's dangerous, we must stop him!"

The others didn't hesitate a moment. Spear, arrow and bullet struck the wall behind Jones. Magical weapons didn't usually miss a still target, and they didn't miss this time either - the projectiles simply slipped through him.

"It's just a little compensation for dying from the repeated crossing over between worlds.", Jones looked up from the console with a mocking smile crossing his lips. "The instability that kills me protects me too. Fair's fair, isn't it? Let's see if your magic can protect you from the model W17!"

"Get down!", the older Kyouko shouted. The ex-magical girls were down on their faces in an instant. The others assumed that they did so because they weren't hidden in small gems anymore. But in the next moment about one third of the young Madoka was missing, including her soul gem. It took an infinite moment for the rosy bow to hit the ground. A horribly mutilated body in bloody school uniform followed. A key clicked on the console, the whole world jerked like the picture on the screen of a dying television.

They have never heard anything like the sound that Homulilly's speaker emitted. The world itself felt screaming in pain, despair and rage. The child familiars rushed at Jones and covered him like a swarm of ants. They worked with ruthless professionalism and they lined up in a few seconds boasting with the more interesting pieces pinned on their needle-lances. They left nothing recognizable of him.

And Madoka was floating in front of their line, dressed in white, her impossibly long pink hair swimming in the air. One by one she stroked the familiars' head with a sad smile then she stepped to the witch.

"I remember now! How could I forget that I had come for you...?". Her eyes were glowing in gentle golden light as she took Homulilly's hand. The touch seemed to get off guard the witch who shattered into a cloud of red petals. The wind dispersed the cloud leaving Homura where it had been. She was kneeling in her magical girl dress looking at her savior with a grateful but very confused expression.

Madoka held out her bow.

"Come, Homura-chan, let's break out together!"

"Madoka, please wait just a moment...!"

The returned Homura quickly ran to the others and bowed as a thanks for everything.

"I'll take you at your word, Sakura Kyouko!", she said. "I can't let Kyubey lay hands on Madoka! It was my fault that the Incubators learned about witches, I hope I can still get it right! If you weren't here, I'd..."

The redhead gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder then said goodbye to her friends from her own world.

"There's a local girl outside whom I've already mentioned. She's called Nyameka and she's waiting for you. If things went fine she has very important data with her. Those disks don't have any backup because she blew up the server room. They would be of no use on the other side so please take them to Walbey. Peter can probably figure out a way to use them. I want to hear what we have when I get back!"

Once more she turned back for a moment giving them a grin holding a cereal stick between her teeth. Then she waved to them and followed the other Homura.

"I didn't know anything about this universe. It used to be so far, but all of a sudden our worlds touch...", the Goddess mused. "But everything beyond that force field belongs to our world only. That's where we have to go. Come, Homura-chan!"

They bent the enormous bow together and sent an arrow of intertwined pink and purple flames through the ceiling. It broke through the force field, then something else.

The staying pair could hardly see the huge floating red eyes that were there for a mere moment before the hail of arrows came down on them from the sky. As the eyes hit the ground they exploded in a pink flash of light that erased the whole labyrinth in an instant. It took away their alternatives and it took away Kyouko who chose the other side.

Only the two remained in the middle of the wrecked laboratory, surrounded by blank screens. Homura collapsed as her exhaustion finally hit her. Madoka caught her and stayed there sitting, resting the other girl's head on her lap.

* * *

><p>AN: _(Real life is happening so I didn't have much time lately to work on it, but I still have a lot of material to translate and publish...)_

**__Deki sokonai__**

_Tomoe Mami is finally here! She'll be with us in some later chapters too. No, it won't be her. It'll be Tomoe Mami. Whatever, forget it..._

**__Nari sokonai__**

_Tags: There's More Than One of Everyone, Kyubey's Only Mentioned Though, Parallel universe, Good for Nothing, Half-Baked, A Foolish Appearance, D like Drugs, Cotton Candy with Three Sticks, CASU MARZU, Homura is Fine, Instant Karma_

**_Manukena sugata_**

_Is taking someone apart poetically a 'mature' thing? Moderately, I guess...  
><em>


	8. World's End

**World's End**

_v0.901_

"We should leave, Madoka... Don't worry, I'm fine!"

To prove it Homura got up without help and she was standing before Madoka with shaky legs. The other girl looked into her eyes, gently stroked her face and put an arm around her to help her stumbling through the debris-filled room. The collision with Homulilly's world left the place in ruins. The furniture, computers, instruments and files were lying around broken, wrecked, torn apart. But the two girls weren't much better off. They didn't wish anything but to get out to the open, then to get home together. They were glad that they had survived the last few days. Walbey could wait, they didn't even know yet what would they tell him. Some strange feeling warned them to keep silent about the details in this world. At least they ruined the Power Station and found Kyouko, even though they couldn't take her back home.

The air had warmed up since the ventilation and air conditioning went off. Nothing worked in the tunnels except for the emergency lighting. They could probably be deep underground and they didn't even know the way out. The two girls were facing long, unpleasant hours of finding their way up inside the unknown facility. They kept their ears open and looked behind every door along the corridors they passed hoping that they would find the girl Kyouko said to be waiting for them.

They heard footsteps before a bend. They crouched quickly but wearily to keep an eye on the newcomer. To their relief it proved to be an unknown dark skinned girl of about high school age. She looked just as weary as they were but her eyes were keenly searching for something. Finally she seemed to have found it and firmly made her way towards the two other girls holding out a briefcase.

"Kyouko told me to give it to you if she wouldn't return. So she's...", she gave a startled look as she noticed the redhead's absence.

"Don't worry, she's fine. She's just in another world.", Madoka answered. "If you were with her you must know who we are."

"I knew it much earlier!", Nyameka replied briskly but she didn't continue. A few days ago she would have been overjoyed to see the two legends, but now she was much more considerate. The legends didn't look prepared to handle her excitement.

"And you are like us. You must be the girl Kyouko-chan kept mentioning. You are Nyameka-san, aren't you?", Madoka asked. She'd got less of Jones' magic-suppressing drugs so her senses had already started to return.

"Nyameka Gretel Mathibe. I'm glad to meet you!", the African girl offered her hand. Madoka accepted but Homura was looking at her suspiciously. Something was wrong. How could the daughter of the Power Station's creator in here as a former magical girl?

"I swear that I have nothing to do with this whole...", Nyameka said apologetically. She could handle the last few days quite well, but now she felt a lump in her throat. "I mean... I have my part in it, but I really didn't want this... I'm sorry and I'm so happy that you helped Kyouko to break it! I don't know how you did it, but it was brilliant!"

"We almost bit the dust. Brilliantly.", Homura sighed. She was still haunted by her alternative who wanted to bite the dust so much that she scattered thousands of her teeth on the ground.

Now she accepted Nyameka's hand.

"What exactly is this thing you brought?", she asked then.

The African girl opened a door, stepped to a desk and opened the briefcase. There were hard drives inside neatly lined up and a lot of grief seeds and a dozen of ampules, everything carefully wrapped in foam and fastened to the sides of the briefcase.

"Research material, Witch Elixir samples, notes, and something sent by Meuko. Kyouko said that even I shouldn't know what's that. You say that she didn't even tell it to you...?"

Homura's brows furrowed.

"You say she made you take out a pile of 3D samples without batting an eyelid yet she couldn't tell you what that other thing is? If it was someone else I'd suggest to burn the whole pack before leaving... but I trust Kyouko. Though I'm sure that we don't want anyone to find it on us."

"Nyameka-san, how deep are we?", Madoka asked. "We have to get out of here as soon as possible. I fear that something's terribly wrong outside. By all means we have to tell Walbey what happened!"

"What do you feel, Madoka?", Homura asked anxiously before the third girl could have answered.

"I don't know! But it feels like something's happened to the whole world!"

The raven haired girl gave her a startled look. She had just put two and two together and she was scared of the night. If the dose of 3D and the other world with her own witch self wouldn't be enough, Jones' words he said before he put her in the Device would surely give her the worst nightmares ever...

"It can separate or draw worlds closer changing everything in one or both of them... My God, what have we done?!"

"This way!" - Nyameka pointed to a door. "Kyouko said that we had come up at least a kilometer by the elevator but we must be still quite deep. Luckily there are stairs too from here on. I don't know how we'd get out of here otherwise, because nothing works now."

Homura was wondering what to do after they got out. Along their way through the man-made caves they couldn't see anything but ruins and debris. They were dead on their feet so time to time they stopped to rest a little. One by one they climbed dozens of floors on their way out. Homura's body was the weariest, but at least her soul felt better by now. Madoka was glad to see her recovering from the dangerous state Jones pushed her into and she happily supported her unsteady steps to get up the stairs as quickly as they could.

The surroundings were changing gradually. Painted walls replaced the bare rock and concrete but there was no one around. Nyameka seemed desperately looking for something. It took a while for her to let out what bothered her.

"I don't remember these parts at all, even though I _had to_ come through these levels on my way down. Like we got somewhere else!"

The other two exchanged a look. They thought the same: if everything changed this place could have changed too. Perhaps they weren't even in the Power Station, or there was something else at the same place of this new world...

A little later they ran into an information board with a map. Nyameka tried to decipher the inscription but she couldn't see anything but meaningless scribbles.

"It must be here for the Japanese scientists..."

Homura and Madoka stood silently reading the same board, but they understood the text perfectly: it was a map of the Kazamino Underground Research Laboratories. Nyameka didn't understand why the two stood rooted to the spot.

"It isn't the Power Station that changed, it was us who got somewhere else! If this board is where it's supposed to be then we're almost home.", Madoka explained. "At least we don't have to worry how we can bring the briefcase across the borders. On the other hand, you're pretty far from home. But here we can surely find some help for you... if we can find anyone at all..."

They reached familiar parts soon but the place was still deserted. They could see bullet holes here and there, scattered random objects, debris, dust and browned smears of blood. But no one was around, not even a single corpse.

They browsed through a few offices and changing rooms but the place seemed plundered of everything important that used to be there. There was no research equipment, no weapons that the security could have left behind, even the computers were missing. At least they could find few fitting gray camouflage uniforms so they looked like UN/VP girls on an important mission for the sake of the victims of the Incubators and the whole humankind – exactly the girls who they were. Nyameka got a uniform in advance too so they really looked like a little squad.

They found the spacious entrance hall in ruins. Half of the huge steel gate had come down. In the middle of the hall there sprawled a nasty metal toad: a burnt Type 90 tank. As the girls watched the devastation their ominous foreboding grew stronger and stronger.

"I'd have never thought that it would be the first thing I see in Japan...", Nyameka shook her head. "We've had a few tanks around during the coup... but why is it here?!"

Homura slipped into the wreck. The sounds from inside suggested that she smashed something. A minute later she climbed out with a pair of smoke grenades in her hands.

"This is everything that's left from their equipment. I'm afraid they can be useful out there."

Then she skittered to the gate and peered out. She waved to the other two to come. Nothing moved outside, only the trees swayed in the breeze along the serpentine road winding up here from the city in the valley. The birds were chirping like nothing had happened but the road and the mountain's slopes were torn by bomb craters.

The girls drew themselves in the woods and took the short route down from the mountain. Every time they had to cross the road they looked around very carefully but they could never see anyone. Only a few wrecked cars proved that humans had ever come here. They looked unusable at first glance and the woods seemed safer anyway so the girls didn't even think about taking one.

They reached the edge of the city. Most of the buildings were intact but the inhabitants didn't show themselves. The doors were all locked, the windows curtained, the shops empty. Whatever had happened it must have happened recently as a city can't stand still like this for long.

Madoka quickly grew tired of the deserted streets and the suspense and tugged Homura to a doorway. Nyameka stood fidgeting behind them feeling awkward. She was quite certain that no one in that house would understand her words.

Then someone opened the door and it turned out that even the two Japanese girls weren't much better off. The tiny old man hardly peeked out of the house he tried to slam the door in their faces. Homura firmly stopped him. The way she did terrified the old man. He desperately tried again and again but his shrunken muscles couldn't stand a chance against Homura's will. Finally he gave up and looked begging in the purple eyes.

"Please, in the name of the eight million, go away! If they see you here we'll all be shot dead!"

Homura was struck dumb. At least Madoka could put a few simple sentences together.

"What happened here? Have we done something we don't know about?"

The old man didn't answer just pressed them more.

"Just go away! My grandson will report you if he gets home!"

This time Homura let him lock them out. She would have liked to instantly leave Kazamino but she also wanted to know what had happened. The atmosphere of the city felt depressing, the fear in the air was almost palpable.

Nyameka didn't understand the old man's words but she got the point: yesterday's heroes were unwanted in their own country. She was shaking with anger but couldn't do anything, she couldn't even tell the old geezer how thankful he should be. She wanted to kick the door but Homura held her back.

"Don't! I have no idea what happened but we can't give them more reasons to pick on us. From now on we'll be even more cautious."

They approached the deep concrete and glass canyon of the busy downtown through the trees and bushes of the parks. Homura was almost tugging Madoka by her hand and the pinkette felt that the other girl was led by instincts and experience from a past she couldn't remember so she just followed.

Then she felt someone holding on her other hand too. She glanced behind her in surprise. She should have felt any approaching person, but the small child was just there unnoticed and now she was smiling behind Madoka as she held on her hand letting the pinkette drag her.

As Madoka could judge the horribly thin little girl could be ten or eleven years old and she wore green twin tails adorned with oversized golden beads and a light blue dress. As the two older girls stopped she ran straight into them. Only Madoka's grip stopped her from falling, making her smile a little confused.

Madoka studied the girl who could attach to her undetected then she glanced at Homura. To her surprise the dark haired girl looked shocked. Homura exactly knew the girl they had run into. She also knew that despite her looks the child was about as old as they had been when they first met. She might have been better off with a contract with the Incubators... Homura desperately tried to shake off this thought.

"Madoka, this is my fault. I shouldn't have forgotten about her but this time she didn't make a contract so we've never found her..."

She suddenly stopped and clapped her hand over her mouth. Now she felt how she hurt Madoka when she blamed herself. They had already learned that they couldn't help everyone who was, had been, would be around. They couldn't do anything in this world. She tried to apologize without words then she realized how pointless it could look to Madoka. But the other girl understood her and gently stroked her face.

The child tilted her head as she looked at the two with genuine curiosity.

"Do you know Yuma? But Yuma isn't famous like you two!"

The black haired girl nodded.

„I saw you when you were this little.", she raised her hand to her waist. She tried to use simple sentences and avoid mentioning things like the time loop. She didn't want to confuse Yuma who seemed to be stuck in her childhood, or worse. But the child didn't listen, the two girls' intertwined fingers and the way they behaved fully occupied her attention.

"Why are you hiding in the bushes holding hands? Are you in love? Mama said that two girls shouldn't be! But Mama isn't to be trusted!"

"_H__ere we go__!__ Her mother is the one __who__ ma__de__ her __what she is!__We should have saved Yuma from her__!_", Homura messaged to Madoka.

"_Is she that woman who's coming here?_", Madoka asked in reply.

"Yes, it's her! Yuma doesn't want to go with her!", the child answered at once, flailing desperately as she hid behind the older girls.

"_Don't say it __aloud __if you don't want her to hear you._", Homura messaged to Yuma.

But Madoka switched to spoken English instead to involve Nyameka, because the African girl who couldn't speak Japanese nor catch telepathic messages could hardly understand anything.

"But what could we do for her, Homura-chan? She isn't a magical girl... even though she understands our messages. It probably wouldn't do any good to her if she had to fight on our side..."

Chitose Masako arrived at this very moment. Even Homura didn't know her in person but she was quite positive that Yuma's mother hadn't been wearing strange letters tattooed on her face before.

The woman was furious to see her runaway daughter in such company. That problem child had to find these two of all... and they even had a gaijin with them, a black gaijin at that who was so alien to her that she could have easily come from another planet. And even worse, they weren't even speaking Japanese, just to exclude her. She was sure that they deserved her hate regardless of the gossips and current official information about them. They had got everything she could only covet and they wasted everything. They were famous but didn't make any use of their fame. They were rich but they just screwed around on the battlefield instead of enjoying the wealth. They were young and pretty yet they didn't go and catch two good husbands. They had a sinful affair with one another instead, and the Kaname parents just kept smiling and patting their shoulders. Masako hated that mock of a family, that bunch of hypocrites. They were living in sin and now they tried to interfere with her own life. Fortunately this was a new, better world in which they couldn't do anything they pleased.

"Come here at once you good-for-nothing, away from those dykes! They're wanted criminals!", she yelled at her daughter gesturing with a smoking cigarette butt.

Yuma had no intention to obey, she huddled herself up behind Madoka and Homura.

Masako approached menacingly. Nyameka was sure she had seen enough and stepped in her way. The woman just tossed her aside and raised her hand to hit the next person she finds. But she tripped in some invisible obstacle and almost fell on her face as she rushed past the girls. She turned back with great determination and tried and failed again, just like the scared old man a little earlier. She fiercely peered into the lavender eyes that held her back. Of course, _they_ had warned everyone about these girls' supernatural abilities. The newscasters used to call them deserted magical girls. Then they became _specially trained terrorists_, but it didn't make any difference to Masako.

"I should have thought you'd try something you goddamn lesbian witches! But the Civil Protection will happily deal with you! I was stupid not to start here!"

She flicked away the cigarette butt and called a very short number.

"Hello, Reward Wire? It's Chitose Masako here, four-seven-two-three. Two wanted persons have been sighted in the Sycamore Park. Yes, top priority."

Pink eyes flashed and she screamed and dropped the phone which flew in the bushes leaving a trail of smoke. Masako staggered to the nearest bench holding a hand to her face and flopped down trembling in shock and anger.

"Teach this to Yuma too!", the child cheered but Madoka and Homura were too scared to share her enthusiasm. The woman wasn't too hard to deal with but the interrupted call could possibly stir up serious threat. Madoka regretted that it took so long to fry the phone.

But the reaction was incredibly quick and close. A few seconds and they heard the sirens approaching from the other side of the park. Those mysterious someones at the other side of the line seemed always alert.

Homura glanced around but she couldn't see any vehicle they could have used so she closed her eyes to size up her inner reserves.

"I'm sorry Madoka, I don't know anything better. I think I can do it with the both of us now... take Yuma on your neck and take my hand! Nyameka, I'll carry you!"

The African girl looked her up and down in surprise.

"I don't understand anything, but shouldn't we do the opposite? You must be much lighter than me..."

„She's right, Homura-chan! A few hours ago you couldn't even walk without help...", Madoka answered already knowing what Homura wanted to do. "We should really do the other way around. I'll carry her and you take Yuma! And promise me that you won't strain yourself too much! I really don't want you to harm yourself any more. And you two, hang on to us very tight!"

The pinkette was relieved to see Homura to nod with a bleak smile. Nyameka was even more confused now, but as she seated herself on Madoka's shoulders she understood everything. She experienced the feeling speed bikers seek at ten thousand rpm and full throttle. Her grip tightened on Madoka while Yuma was smiling widely and waving back from Homura's neck. The smoke grenades covered Masako in dark gray mist and they could only hear her shouting something, then even these voice splinters drowned in cough and disappeared in the distance and the hissing of the wind.

This wasn't how Nyameka imagined time magic, but at least she saw why she shouldn't have tried to fight with Homura. Nyameka knew that the black haired girl was the source of the magic, but thanks to some mystic link both veterans slipped in a different time while she remained an outside observer. She couldn't see where they zigzagged, even the two girls' moves seemed unnatural to her eyes. She could hardly sense that she was saved by such a sudden turn from bumping into a patrolling drone. If it wasn't for Madoka's surprisingly strong grip she could have long been left behind at a corner. Now they were racing along the empty road: there were people on the sidewalks here and there, but the cars were mostly left on the sides of the roads.

The drones turned around and begin to follow them closing in gradually. They didn't miss any corner the girls took. Madoka fried one of them but she almost fell on her face while doing so and five new drones turned up instantly as a reinforcement. A huge display glowed on the side of a high-rise building. Instead of the usual advertisements it showed the description and portraits of Madoka and Homura. The speed the hidden enemy reacted with scared the girls.

The next park belonged to the no man's land between Kazamino and Mitakihara. It used to be a part of the city but during the last few years it degraded into a mere vacant lot next to the dying industrial zone. Homura had long known this place and if they had Kyouko with them she'd have instantly known where they were heading.

They darted into the thick bushes and Nyameka flied, fell then rolled in the grass on the other side. As she got on her feet she saw Homura on her knees, struggling for breath while holding her hands against her chest, surrounded by the worried Madoka and Yuma. Nyameka was worried for Homura too, but the intermittent high-pitched beeping from the bushes where they had just come through scared her even more. Then the beeping accelerated to shrill chirping and exploded in a burst of deafening white noise and a blinding flash.

"Kaname-san, Akemi-san, this way!"

A blonde girl waved from the bushes. She was the fourth member of the legendary quartet Nyameka had always wanted to meet. Tomoe Mami guided them toward the ruins among the dense woods. Madoka and Nyameka followed stumbling in the undergrowth, supporting Homura from both sides.

They shoved through an overgrown, barely visible gate into the former Sakura church. Nature had already taken over in there, nettle grew in the cracks of the floor and trees invaded through the long broken stained glass windows to get back the area humans had taken from them. There was nothing left in the nave but remainders of the pews vandalized by hobos and the stairs that led to the high altar. Mami ducked under the stairs and finally turned to the others in the twilight.

She had changed since they last saw her. The showcase lieutenant-colonel of the UN/VP was now wearing denim and boots instead of elegant costumes and tied her hair in a handy bun. Two little curly tresses by the sides of her face and a third at her forehead, this was everything she left of the iconic drills that made her so popular on the screens.

"We can take a rest here. I've knocked out the drones and there are no cameras around. The place will be as safe as possible for the next few hours."

"Mami-san, how did you know that we were coming?", Madoka asked while she gently seated Homura. "And what happened up here to begin with? It's like everyone's gone crazy!"

"I was guided by Mikuni-san. She knew when and where you'd pop up. And the people aren't crazy... they're just frightened. A lot of inexplicable things happened after you disappeared down there. All the Vortices closed at once and none has opened since then. It seems that we could even lift the quarantines anytime. But we couldn't celebrate because the Observers arrived, at the exact same moment in every city of the world. They're a bit different than those in Walbey's pictures because our Observers look like bald Japanese. It is said that everywhere they popped up they look like the local natives and know the language. They didn't need a week to defeat every army then they simply arrested and executed one percent of the population - as a warning. Then came everyone who would still lift up their voices. Anywhere you go there's still a few who resist, but that's all: a handful of people. The Mitakihara cell is led by Mikuni-san and we have Walbey too. He was so worried about you two that he stayed in Kazamino. Then the war broke out and we fleed together before they attacked the underground lab. Thankfully Mikuni-san had already started to organize the Resistance before they arrived.

"Wait a minute!", Nyameka snapped. "So they didn't even attack you but this 'Mikuni-san' was already racking her brain to figure out what to do when you lost?! Doesn't she give up a bit too early?"

"Nyameka-san, please don't judge her! Mikuni-san sees many things before they'd happen.", Madoka replied soothingly.

"And this is our luck!", Mami said. "We'd be defenseless against the Observers without her, because somehow they calculate possible futures and manipulate the events to get favorable results! And it's not even magic to them, but technology. It couldn't even be magic because they'd need emotions for that but they don't feel anything. They're like Incubators, even though Mikuni-san says that they're our own descendants from about 600 years in the future. She's the only one who can do something against them so she keeps sitting at the University on a pile of grief seeds only God knows how she obtained and keeps an eye on the future to lessen our handicap. She has enough eyes in Mitakihara so when in the city we'll follow her instructions too. But before we'd go into details I think you also have things to tell me. Have you found Sakura-san? And who are these girls? Have you brought them from Hochfeld?"

"Mami-san, she's Nyameka-san!", Madoka introduced the African girl. "We've met in the Power Station... or, at least, somewhere underground where we thought to be in the Power Station... she's a former magical girl, she's just been through her first operation. And Yuma-chan is... I don't know. Homura-chan knows her from earlier. We've met here in Kazamino. It was her mother who reported us. She had a strange tattoo on her face."

"Then you had run into an informer of theirs. They're nicknamed loyalists. The Observers established this system right after their victory. It's scary how fast they made themselves at home. But I still don't understand why did you bring this child with you. Her mother's going to look for her."

"Because mom's evil!", Yuma exclaimed wholeheartedly.

Homura had an entirely different answer in mind.

"Because Yuma is one of my mistakes. One more thing I messed up. Like Amy.", she said hoarsely, sitting slumped on a stone block, burying her face in her hands.

Mami didn't entirely understand. She was eyeing the raven haired girl deep in her thoughts.

"What happened to you, Akemi-san? I feel that something went wrong."

Homura just waved off the question as she thought about their last mission.

"You already know that we infiltrated the Power Station to free Kyouko. But they caught us instead and it was Kyouko who helped us. Jones was really there, just like we suspected... he experimented on us. He opened a gateway between two worlds and we've met our alternatives. Even you were there, and Sayaka too. And Kyouko left to that world to help them against their Incubators. But Jones did something worse, and changed everything with it. I suspect something but I don't think it would be safe to talk about it. And I think if I suspect something then Walbey will immediately know. Just tell him that Jones has changed the place of our world!"

"You can tell him yourself, he wants to see you as soon as possible! But we have to get into Mitakihara first. It's easy for me, but you two are wanted. Actually you had been wanted for a while. We didn't understand why because they did never give a damn about us."

Before she could have continued Madoka interrupted her with worried look.

"Mami-san... are my parents okay? The Observers must have looked for us at home... didn't they hurt them?"

"I'm sorry, Kaname-san. We couldn't contact them since this whole thing began. They never pick up the phone and don't answer online. We didn't try to get to them in person, Mikuni-san said that it would be dangerous. The Observers would associate us with you if they saw us there. We hope they don't answer because they know that they're being watched."

Madoka's face turned pale and even Homura felt dizzy. In the distant, hazy, medicine-flavored past her bad heart would have possibly failed her. Before meeting Madoka she had no one that would have cared for her, no one that would have made her worry. But it was all different now. There are moments when the world can wait. She knew that the world would involve itself in anything they do anyway, like it always happened.

"We must see them!", she snapped. Madoka gave her a thankful look.

Mami nodded understandingly.

"Go look for them, but after that we want to see you at the University. Alive. We don't even have to change our plan. Our problem remains: we want to get you into Mitakihara but they keep the incoming roads and bridges under control. They stop every vehicle and identify every pedestrian. They'd immediately spot you. The river is not an option, you'd make an easy target while swimming. Mikuni-san can help you to avoid the Observers on the streets but even she can't help you to get past the checkpoints. On the other hand, Walbey sent you a lot of Cortexiphan. He suspects that with the right dose Kaname-san could take you to the other side, just like Olivia. The entry is guarded only on our side, at least we hope that they haven't invaded the other universe. According to Walbey it's safe to cross over now that the decay of our world stopped.

"I've never done it, Mami-san, but I must try!", Madoka answered with a determined look.

"I've brought you some extra equipment, Kaname-san. You'll need it to cross over. I report that you're here then I give it to you."

Then she took her phone from the pocket of her denim jacket.

"I've found them, exactly where and when expected.", she said to someone on the other side. "Four. No, she isn't with them, they're with two new girls. No, you'll see. They say she's alive. Right, according to the plan. Yes, they go there first. What do your lines say? Okay, as we arranged."

She pocketed her phone then turned to the girls again.

"Walbey would like to see you. He's sad that Sakura-san isn't here and he's sorry for sending you there. Mikuni-san says that it'll be the best to leave around four-twenty, give or take ten minutes. She'll call me should anything change."

She paused to have a look at the group. With the possible exception of Yuma they looked quite depressed, especially Homura. Madoka just whispered something in her ear while fiddling with her hair. Mami watched them with a bit of envy but she knew them enough to know that they probably had good reason to pay more attention to each other than to her speech. She had seen the dark haired girl dragging the four of them in her own time and she knew that it was exhausting enough for her even when she did it alone. And even though Homura didn't go into details Mami was terrified of the thought of Jones experimenting on the two. So she waited a little more and observed the new girls in the meantime.

The African girl was a rather unusual sight for her, yet Mami felt that she was a 'pretty normal' girl with a 'pretty normal' post-magical trauma, just like herself. She surely had her own story and one day she would probably tell it. Mami felt that they'd probably understand each other. At least in English. The child was a harder nut to crack. She seemed keen and playful but very immature and Mami felt something hiding under the childish surface - but the blonde didn't want to mull over this problem now.

"You've heard the call. This is the way we talk on the phone and we discuss every important matter in person because the calls might be monitored. Sometimes we use encrypted two-way radios through relay stations and often change the frequency."

Nyameka had been silent so far but something worried her and she couldn't help asking anymore.

"Excuse me... Tomoe-san... is there any news from Namibia? I don't even know how we left the Power Station but I'm afraid everything's crashed there... have you heard about any disaster in my country?"

Mami just shook her head. Any news from the outside world was censored and contorted by the Observers' propaganda lately.

"Nyameka-san...! I'm so sorry, we forgot about your parents! We don't know anything about them!", Madoka realized.

"Don't worry about them. My mother died several years ago and my father has just been shot.", the Namibian girl answered with her head bowed. "Aunt Mahloli was the only one to help me from my family since then. It doesn't matter where I go, no one will miss a corrupt minister's daughter back in Windhoek. I'd have just liked to know what happened at home..."

Madoka gave her a sad look. She could never get used to it, even though it was so normal by magical girl standards. And before they exposed the aliens most of these girls either died in witch barriers or ended up as witches themselves. Madoka was quite sure that it would have been Nyameka's fate too if she hadn't met Kyuoko.

"Don't worry, I can manage.", Nyameka gave her a bleak smile. "Just go, I'll cheer for you. At least you should find your parents."

"Oh... before we'd disappear on you... this was sent by Kyouko."

Homura held out the briefcase she had got from the Namibian girl. She was too weak to get up and give it to Mami so the blonde stepped to her and took it.

"What's in it?", Mami asked raising her brows.

Homura took a deep breath but couldn't say anything. She asked Madoka with her tired eyes to do the talking.

"A lot of dangerous things.", Madoka began. "A bunch of grief seeds, disks with research material and something so bad that Kyouko didn't even tell us what's that. She said that Peter would probably figure out what to do with it, but I don't know how we can contact him in this chaos."

"Neither do I. No one knows where he is. The only thing I know is that Walbey asked him and Olivia to retrieve something from somewhere. But the grief seeds will come handy, Mikuni-san has to use her magic too much."

"There's something more.", Madoka kept speaking while she sat down next to Homura letting the other girl hanging on to her. "It's a drug Jones was working on. It's called 3D. They used it to make witches out of magical girls. They dosed Homura-chan with it to find her parallel in the other universe. Mami-san, the other Homura-chan was a witch and we've been to her labyrinth!"

Mami turned red. She was close to use words not becoming to a classy lady. She counted to ten, twenty, fifty with clenched fists. She was looking for the part of her that methodically took notes about every witch she met and figured out how to make muskets out of ribbons.

Finally she found it. Then she had to find the supply she brought for the two to get them into Mitakihara. Two rather big doses of Cortexiphan, a pair of ear plugs, a dive mask with covered visor, two Beretta 92FS' and a waterproof radio transmitter.

The pair kept silent too, only Madoka raised her brows at the ear plugs and dive mask.

"Walbey said that you'll need an isolation tank to cross over.", Mami explained. "And among all things here the winter fountain at the bridge is the closest to a tank. You inject half of the Cortexiphan, it's even better if you do it now, you take these not to see nor hear anything, the lukewarm water will switch off your sense of heat, then... I hope you know what to do."

It was all clear to Madoka. She had already tried how does it feel to float in the emptiness and she knew that her subconscious would do strange things without the consent of her conscious self. And if there aren't too many obstacles, it would do these things to reality itself.

She hesitated for a moment then she opened the case of a clean syringe to clear the way for her inner powers. Although the drug was effective if taken orally it took effect faster and better this way. Madoka remembered how shocked and worried her parents had been when they saw the first needle marks on her arm. She still didn't fully understand how she could convince them that her mission was important enough to do this to herself. Homura's repeated medical examinations and soul magnet treatments at the Kazamino base could have possibly prepared them for the things to come. They also talked to Olivia who had first met the drug thirty years earlier and there still weren't any lasting effects. But Madoka's determination must have been the most important of all.

The doses she used on the battlefield were very small, but this time she was preparing to cross over the boundaries of the world so this dose was many times greater. She suspected that this time she wouldn't get away with it.

But she was still fine. She smiled at Mami then gently helped Homura to sit up and eat. There was enough food in Mami's backpack for the five of them. The resistance fighters usually ate packaged food from the University's cafeteria but the relatives of Mami's ex helped them too from a nearby village.

"He's a good guy. It was no one's fault that we didn't fit together. You see, he still helps us...", the blonde mused.

As she watched the two she couldn't help reconsidering the idea that had always been crawling in the back of her mind. Maybe she should find a nice girl, anyone who could help her endure these times. She quickly shook her head. That surely wouldn't work. And it wasn't _that_ bad. She had friends now and it was much more than back in her school days. She kept watching them while she brushed aside her gloomy thoughts to smile more sincerely. She switched to a more lighthearted subject to escape her thoughts.

"You've surprised me with this hairstyle. Is this a new game to you?", she asked the girlfriends. Madoka had just tied a bow to Homura's freshly woven braid while the other girl was just staring forward like she had been hypnotized. Homura was so tired that she couldn't even sense that part of the world that wasn't Madoka. She felt the familiar fingers playing with her tresses and these touches soothed and lulled her.

Yuma grew envious of their game but the only hair she could play was her own. She had just finished with her new braids and she swayed them grinning, with those huge beads on their ends. Then she began to examine Nyameka's much trickier cornrows.

Madoka watched her with a tired smile.

"Not really. I just braided my hair to put on that diving suit easier and I didn't have the time to let it down.", she answered. "But Homura-chan is so cute like this..."

"You're cute too, Kaname-san, but I still think that you both look better if you let your hair loose."

So Madoka let her hair down and turned around to show that her tresses were split in two in Homura's style.

"Do you get it?", she winked. But her hair wasn't used to this treatment and a head shake made the parting disappear.

Then she sat down on the ground, laid Homura's head into her lap and took her hand the other girl held out to her. Years had passed since they had to spend the night among ruins. Homura probably couldn't even have fallen asleep without a physical contact with Madoka back then. She was probably afraid of Madoka disappearing overnight, of the realization that everything since Walpurgisnacht had been an illusion, of the empty city without exit that haunted her dreams.

Now they relived those times. Mecca had been last place where they fought together, the last place where they were surrounded by strange, hostile night in their sleep. When they fought witches their mission rarely took more than a few hours. When they went to look for magical girls in faraway cities they could always find shelter for the night. But in Mecca there was nothing. Nothing but the ever hissing wind among the vacated buildings and the loose familiars of the witches that had already fell out of this world. At the center of the closed city there sat the unfinished sarcophagus, a depressing half-baked attempt to save the holy city without desecrating it, utterly failed and waiting to be cleaned from the supernatural dangers that consumed its builders. That mission reminded of hunting in the Zone of Chernobyl or Fukushima. They had to check their radiation dose every evening as they were so close to an open wormhole leading to the unknown.

This evening Madoka and Mami talked about those times. Nyameka listened them shivering and they could even hold Yuma's attention. Then it was Nyameka's turn to tell them how she had sniffed around in the depths of the Power Station and how she met the former magical girls. Yuma was still listening.

They didn't pay attention to the fading light and once they just saw that they couldn't even see the others' outlines. Yet they didn't make a fire. Its light and heat could have possibly attracted some curious eyes. Mami and Nyameka kept on telling their stories for a while in the complete darkness but Madoka focused on the dark haired girl sleeping on her lap.

* * *

><p>She couldn't remember when she had fallen asleep but she was positive that the dawn was nigh. Homura quietly moaned in her sleep and Madoka gently stroked her forehead.<p>

"Does Akemi-san still have nightmares?", an uncertain shady blob asked in front of her. Of course, they spent the night in the ruins with Mami and two other girls. Madoka just waved, she didn't feel strong enough to tell the nightmarish details of the last few days that haunted her too.

"It's after four, you should leave! Mikuni-san gave the nod too. You probably won't bump into Observers but if you do, run. You don't have any chance against them with your weapons. They see time differently and those bullets are simply aren't fast enough, they catch them in flight with bare hands. But the guns may come handy against the informers and the civil protection. I don't tell you to shoot at passersby or Yuma-chan's mother but no one knows what future holds...

"Feel free to shoot at her, she deserves it!", they heard the child girl's voice from the darkness.

Mami stiffened in an instant like freezing rain. How many nights she had lain awake regretting her wish... She should have thought it through so she could have saved her family. She would have given so much to get them back... How could anyone wish for her own mother's death?

"Dear God... Do you understand what you just said?"

"I understand it just as clearly as she understood that she tried to kill Madoka and Homura when she reported them. And she knew exactly what she was doing when she broke my arm. My mother is a bad person and the whole world would be better off without her."

Mami was dumbfounded. There wasn't a trace of the ignorant playful child in Yuma's ice cold voice. Yuma even forgot to talk about herself in third person. The blonde girl pitied and feared her at once. She was afraid of their future with this broken child.

Madoka sat up supporting herself with both arms behind her back. She saw what she saw yesterday and knew enough about Homura's parents too not to see anyone enviable just for having parents. She wanted to defend Yuma but her very first move pierced her head with burning pain. Then every single heartbeat shot another imaginary bullet through her brain. She groaned in pain.

"Madoka... It's the Cortexiphan, isn't it?"

Homura wasn't asleep anymore, the pain woke her up too.

"I knew that I wouldn't get away with this much... I'm sorry that you have to endure it too...", she answered with a lopsided smile Homura couldn't see in the darkness anyway. Madoka held her hands against her eyes and forehead and took a few deep breaths.

They lurched to their feet very slowly. The pain made them nauseous so they couldn't even think of having a breakfast and they planned to bathe in the fountain soon so they had nothing else to do before leaving. They woke up Nyameka and said goodbye to her too. Mami escorted them to the church gate by her phone's light then the two could see enough under the unusually faintly illuminated sky of the two adjoining cities.

They crossed the rail tracks near the church with muscles aching from the run yesterday then they crept from tree to tree in the unkempt park until they reached the riverside. The eastern horizon was already glowing in blue and the rest of the sky wasn't black silk anymore. They saw the end of two bridges: one was made of steel and concrete and led to the island where their former school and Mami's house were. The other was a shallow pool built upon a hot spring, full of water lilies, even at winter. This one hopefully opened to another universe.

They picked the darkest corner where no one could see them then slipped into the lukewarm water. Madoka covered her eyes and plugged her ears then laid on her back floating close to the surface. Homura tried to hold her hand without distracting her and waited.

"I'm so sorry, Homura-chan, I can't... I'm going around in circles, my head is full of thoughts and... you are inside too. I may need you to take a dose too."

Homura thought it over. There seemed to be no right solution. It didn't matter whether they'd use their remaining Cortexiphan or not, she saw no way back. If they could be fast enough on the other side and get to the other Madoka's home before the effect would fade away, then maybe... She couldn't even imagine what the Goddess' parents would do if they saw them, but she didn't have any better idea.

"If you think that I need it more than you...", she began. Madoka smiled at her and nodded. She fished the little waterproof package out of her pocket.

"Are you sure?", Homura asked, just to be safe.

Madoka handed her the syringe and the ampule they got for the way back.

Homura had never tried such a big dose. Now she tried to relax and turn off her own consciousness to let Madoka lead them both. It seemed that Cortexiphan began to cause hallucinations in this amount. She heard footsteps somewhere behind. Perhaps they were their own steps. She was running together with the other girl along a dark, empty corridor. The floor, the ceiling, the walls were covered with a checkerboard of black and white stone blocks, the only colorful thing in this monochrome world was Madoka's pink hair. She was running right before her, right ahead then circling up the black and white spiral stairs.

"Freeze!", the silhouettes shouted. They stepped out of the walls and followed them. They were dazzling black and white at once to contrast black and white stones as well. Madoka didn't look at them but kept running like she was running for her life.

"It's the Civil Protection here! Leave the fountain at once! You are under arrest!"

Homura couldn't tell if reality filtered in their visions or she was just imagining those silhouettes, but she was sure that there was no way back. They were standing before a huge steel gate locked by two rows of heavy fasteners. Madoka planted her feet then grabbed the lever that moved the fasteners and pulled it with all her might. A bullet whizzed past as it glanced off the metal. Homura sprang to the lever and pulled it together with the other girl. Another bullet hit the gate between them. The heavy gate opened slowly and they fell through, into the unknown darkness.

* * *

><p><em>AN: And so it begins..._

_'Our' Mami-san is here! But even the blonde cheese can't be really happy in this world... I know, I'm an evil writer, a Drosselmeyer..._

_Labels: Absolutely No Rebellion, But There's Fringe 5th Season, Kazamino URL, Sakura Church, Chitose Family, They're Watching the Future, Psychokinesis, Mecca, Waste Heat of Geothermal Heating, Double Bridge, Homura is fine, Prepare for Unforeseen Consequences, Slow Teleport Effect, Accidentally Mixing Up Places, Growing Doses of Cortexiphan, Braids, Natalia Poklonskaya Wa Veteran Dakedo (sorry, Mami-san :D)_

_Beta read: shiNIN_


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